Museum of Natural History

Today after the meet and greet, we headed off with a city tour guide to hit a few of the local city tourist locations. museums and historical buildings, cathedrals and colonial exhibits.

first stop was the Museum of Natural History. Basically a one stop shop for all your crash course Inca and Peruvian history and culture. was great to get some idea of the scope of things, from the pre inca civilisations to the inca, spanish invasion and modern day. was also a bit disheartening to me personally to see them losing their culture slowly to a growing western influence. Billboards and advertising, Traffic and chaos. shopping malls and the almighty dollar taking over from traditional ways. i guess this is where these museums are so important, today as we arrived, five bus loads of school kids from around the district were there as well.


Inca mummy. yup even this culture had a belief in the afterlife. you were buried with cloth and posesions to go with you into the next life. being placed and wrapped in the fetal position to be "re-born" into the next life.


certain cultures believed in the practise of deforming their skulls for decorative and religious purposes. from birth the infants heads are bound and pushed into shape while their skull bones are soft and growing. i got the strange feeling these were extra terestrial. the side effects as shown below were that by thier 20s the deformed skulls left no room for a growing brain. primitive surgery was needed to relieve pressure on the brain, while the patients were alive. they often survived as skulls were found with "healed" bone sections.




Huge Inca carving in solid granite. 2 - 3m High. 3 inches thick, the only tools used were primitive bronze chisels. the acuracy was amazing in the carving. this was one of those "lost and found pieces" it was rescued from a farmer who was using the slab as a table top up side down, not knowing the carving beneath.



potery and ornimentals were a big thing. strangly they were mainly used as art pieces and not as storage containers. coloured ink was used and determined by the heat of the kilms. sexuality and education was also a big thing. there's replica pottery in all the stores, and first thoughts to the uneducated is, man that pot looks like a bong, and its got this crazy penis dude on it. turns out these types of ornaments were made in the culture for sex education amungst other things. funny how our western culture has turned this type of art away from education and into something thats "not viewable for childrens eyes"