Skills of the Ancient Peruvians – Part I

Speaking of Peruvian surgery, archaeological anthropologist J. Alden Mason, author of Ancient Civilizations of Peru, quoting the well-known archaeologist and paleopathologist R. L. Moodie, has stated: “I believe it to be correct to state that no primitive or ancient race of people anywhere in the world had developed such a field of surgical knowledge as had the pre-Columbian Peruvians. Their surgical attempts are truly amazing and include amputations, excisions, trepanning, bandaging, bone transplants, cauterizations and other less evident procedures (John Alden Mason, author of Ancient Civilizations of Peru, Viking Penguin, New York, 1975; Roy Lee Moodie, An introduction to the study of ancient evidences of disease, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1923).

It should be noted that Trepanning was conducted in Israel long before Lehi left Jerusalem—in Jericho; Tel Lachish, also known as Tell ed-Duweir; The Timna Valley, located in southern Israel in the southwestern Arabah, approximately 20 miles north of the Gulf of Aqaba and the city of Eilat, and Hebron in the Wadi Hebran skulls (Baruch Arensburg and  Israel Hershkovitz, Cranial deformation and trephination in the Middle East, Memories of the Society of Anthropology of Paris Bulletin, vol.XIV, Series 5, iss.3, 1988, pp139-150).

Mason also wrote of the use of anaesthetics and possibly hypnosis, adding that some skulls show the result of operations on the frontal sinus. In addition, the “operating rooms” of the early Peruvians were first cleared and purified by the sprinkling and burning of maize corn-flour, first black and finally white.

All the peoples of ancient Peru had an extensive medical knowledge. Their surgical skill was remarkable, and like non-Indo-Europeans in many other parts of the world, ancient and modern, they practiced this delicate operation of trepanation with remarkable success (Robert Popham, "Trepanation as a Rational Procedure in Primitive Surgery," University of Toronto Medical Journal, vol.31, no.5, February 1954, pp204-211).

The delicate operation of Tepanning is a surgical intervention making a burr hole drilled or scraped into the human skull—for the treatment of epidural and subdural hematomas, as well as surgical access for certain other neurosurgical procedures, such as intracranial pressure monitoring

 

Such extremely delicate surgery implies the use of some kind of anesthetic. An Austrian-born, American anthropologist, Robert H. Lowie, a professor of anthropology at Berkeley and assistant curator at the American Museum of Natural History, New York. An Ethnologist, Lowie reminds us that we owe the very fundamental discovery of anesthetics to the ancient South American Peruvian. As he says, "What is absolutely certain is that our local anesthetics go back to the Peruvian Indian's coca leaves, whence our cocaine" (Robert H. Lowie, An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, New York, Farrar and Rinehart, 2nd edition 1940, p336).

Another important invention from the same source is the enema. Archaeologist Robert F. Heizer, A longtime professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley,

 in an issue of a well-known publication which was devoted to the history of this instrument, states that: “Enemas were known in ancient Sumeria, Babylonia, India, Greece and China. American Indians independently invented it, using a syringe made of an animal bladder and a hollow leg bone. Pre-Columbian South Americans fashioned latex into the first rubber enema bags and tubes (Robert Fleming Heizer, "The Use of the Enema by the Aboriginal American Indians,” Ciba Symposia, vol.5, February 1944, p1686-1690).

The medical practices of the Indians of North and South America prior to the conquests of both Inca and Spanish, their cultures by Caucasian wars and exploitation, were truly amazing in their magnitude and excellence. Our fractional knowledge of these attainments derives from early historical records, ethno-botanical works by botanists and pharmacologists, and from intensive study of skeletal materials by trained observers. Included in the roster of medical techniques was the administration of enemas and lavements by means of a number of instruments—bulb and piston type syringes and clyster tubes (George P. Murdock, Our Primitive Contemporaries, New York, Macmillan, 1934, pp428-429).

 

Textile fibers from alpaca, vicuña (better than cashmere fleece), alpaca and pima cotton from the highlands of Peru, one of the best cottons in the world for it's amazing quality that provides long life without decoloration or significant changes

 

In addition, in the matter of Textiles, modern man has been borrowers in almost every detail. Mason considers that it is literally impossible to exaggerate the technical achievements of these Peruvian highlanders in the field of textiles. He holds that it is not the view merely of enthusiastic archaeologists, but of textile manufacturers themselves. In fact, skill of the early Peruvians is termed “incredible,” including their invisible mending in place of patching—a skill still possessed and used by the Aymara.

Among their textiles, according to Mason, have been found "twining, plain cloth, repp (types of plain weave), twill, gingham, warp-faced and weft-faced or bobbin pattern weave, brocade, tapestry, embroidery, tubular weave, pile knot, double cloth, gauze, lace, needle-knitting, painted and resist-dye decoration and several other special processes peculiar to Peru and probably impossible to produce by mechanical means." It is even possible that they may have watered some crops with colored liquids to produce naturally dyed fabrics that were indeed sun-worthy!

The Aymara of Peru built sailing boats and used them on lakes two and a half miles above sea level—yet, there is scarcely a tree to be found at this elevation. These vessels are made entirely of local bulrushes, and even the sails are mats woven from the same materials. The masts are built up of small pieces of wood spliced together. Provided these vessels are permitted to dry out every little while, they will carry a considerable load.

The pre-Inca Peruvians were master architects, building great monuments and immense fortifications of stones set in to each other by being laid and lapped together right on the spot. How they were erected is still a mystery, for many of the stones are huge. But this certainly is the only genuinely earthquake-proof architecture in the Americas!

In skill and technique in the textile arts the ancient Peruvians had no equal in human history. They wove plain webs, double faced cloths, gauze and voile, knitted and crocheted fabrics, feather work, tapestries, fine cloths interwoven with gold and silver threads—employing in short, every technique save twilling known to the Old World, in addition to some peculiar to themselves. They employed methods identical with those used in the famous Gobelin and Beauvais tapestries; they nevertheless in harmony of colors, fastness of dyes, and perfection of technique, far surpassed the finest products of Europe. (George P. Murdock, Our Primitive Contemporaries, New York, Macmillan, 1934, p. 428, 429)

The vicuña, along with the guanaco, live in the highlands of the Andes, of the genus of the alpaca and llama

 

C. Langdon White says that the best of their fabrics were from the wool of the vicuna, softest of all animal fibers, with 270 threads to the inch as compared with 140 threads of Europe, considered to be outstanding. (C. Langdon White, 'Storm Clouds over the Andes," Scientific Monthly, May, 1950, p308).

As a matter of fact, Europe has never produced a single original natural textile fiber or any dye except perhaps wool. Nor have they contributed a single fundamental or original idea to the basic mechanics of textiles, nor a single original and fundamental process of finishing, dyeing, or printing. In the broader world history of textiles and cloth, the ingenious English inventions of the 18th century (led by Kay's fly-shuttle) are but incidental mechanical modifications and developments of older ideas which grew out of the social conditions in England, and were directly due to the importation of cotton and silk fabrics from the Far East during the 16th and 17th centuries. No new basic principles either in spinning, weaving, or fabric construction, nor new methods of decoration, dyes, colors, or designs, are involved in the English machines. The ancient principles of twisting and elongating masses of fiber into yarn, the principle of interlacing one set of filaments held in place between parallel bars of a second set of filaments, remains undisturbed as used in Peru. No new raw materials are involved: flax, hemp, wool, cotton, and silk, remain the principle fibers. And for color the dyes of antiquity were still employed. As a matter of fact, all the dye raw materials of antiquity, both from Asia and America, were still mentioned in English dyer's manuals in the late part of the 19th century.

(See the next post, “Skills of the Ancient Peruvians – Part II; regarding the inventiveness of the ancient Peruvians)