Inca artifact in Castle

Last night's episode of Castle, Times of Our Lives (airdate: 11/10/14), featured the long-awaited "Caskett" wedding. This happy event came about because of a mystical Native artifact.

Here's the story with the Native aspects noted:

Castle S7 Ep6–Times of Our LivesThe murder this week is of a courier, found with his hand cut off so that the bad guys could steal the case he was handcuffed to. But when Rick & Kate find the missing case at an abandoned coal factory, it turns out to hold a mysterious Incan artifact that Rick picks up for some reason. Has he never seen Indiana Jones??? The bad guys burst in, and Castle hits his head while still holding onto the artifact–and thus ends up in an alternate universe.Castle Recap–Becket and Castle Say I Do: Season 7 Episode 6 “The Time of Our Lives”Alexis says maybe he’s in alternate universe and they tell him to go lie down. ... He searches for parallel universes and watches videos that describe circumstances similar to his and there’s the artifact he touched! The headline asks if it could be the gateway to another world. In the morning, he shows a print out to his mom and daughter. It’s an article about the Incan artifact that connects to the Incan gateway of the Gods.'Castle' Recap: Castle and Beckett Get MarriedCastle impresses Beckett with his knowledge of the Incan artifact, so she allows him to accompany Ryan and Esposito in their search for armed criminals. Another constant is Castle's inability to follow simple instructions, which leads to him finding the artifact but being held at knifepoint. In the ensuing struggle the artifact is broken.

Beckett decides to let Castle go with a semi-stern talking-to and the team focuses on questioning he woman who held him at knifepoint. Her name is Maria Sanchez, and she and her cousin were trying to return the artifact to the Incan people. She says they had nothing to do with the murder.Castle: The Time of Our Lives (Recap and Review)On his way to the station Rick is kidnapped by the men who stole the artifact and it turns out that the villain has worked out that Castle is in the wrong world because of the artifact and he wants Rick to tell him how it works. Beckett shows up and after a brief shootout, Rick gets the artifact back and leaps in front of Kate to keep her from getting shot. As he dies, Rick comes back to “my you.”

Analysis

The mystical Native artifact is a well-worn plot device. It's stereotypical, of course, since real artifacts don't have supernatural powers.

Why don't European artifacts have as much magic as Native ones? Because Native cultures are more fantastical and unreal--at least to us.

At least Castle tried to link the artifact to the Inca religion--claiming it was a portal between universes and not just an evil talisman created by a shaman's curse. And the disk actually resembles the Inca's golden sun disk. As Wikipedia explains:

IntiInti is the ancient Incan sun god. He is revered as the national patron of the Inca state.

Inti is represented as a golden disk with rays and a human face. Many such disks were supposedly held in Cuzco as well as in shrines throughout the empire, especially at Coricancha, where the most significant image of Inti was discovered by anthropologists. This representation, adorned with ear spools, a pectoral, and a royal headband, was known as "punchao," meaning 'day.'So an actual Inca artifact, more or less, was used in this story. That's almost enough to make the gimmick acceptable.



One article claimed Maria Sanchez was "a notorious stolen-artifact smuggler." Turns out she's stealing artifacts to repatriate them, which is a better cause than stealing them for profit. So the Latina or indigenous criminal is actually a good guy of sorts. Nonstereotypical minority characters aren't uncommon on TV, but it's always good to see another one.

Castle has addressed artifact smuggling--an important topic in indigenous communities--before. Now it's hinting at the subject again. Nice job, Castle.

Anyway, this wedding episode was good if not great. Even though I guessed the bad guy the moment I saw him, as usual.

La Civilización Inca--Los Hijos del Sol

Here's a comic book about the Inca:



You can view seven pages of the story here.

Here's a description in Spanish:

La Civilización Inca: Los Hijos del Sol (Colección Relatos del Nuevo Mundo, #2)Los hijos del Sol es una historia de amor, situada en la cambiante y fascinadora geografía del Imperio Inca, desde las profundidades de la Amazonia peruana hasta la costa del Pacífico. Es, sobre todo, un viaje apasionante a aquel imperio legendario, con sus costumbres, sus rituales y con el telón de fondo de la encarnizada guerra entre Huáscar y Atahualpa, los dos hermanos pretendientes al trono, una guerra que estalló poco antes de la llegada de los españoles.Comment:  The summary says it's a love story, a passionate trip to the legendary Inca empire, set amid a war between two brothers fighting for the throne before the Spanish arrived.

Inca temple in Agents of SHIELD

In the second episode of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, titled 0-8-4 (airdate: 10/1/13), an archaeological report brings the team to Peru.

They arrive at an "Incan" temple that looks exactly like a Maya pyramid. The two cultures are unrelated and have little or nothing in common, of course. The Inca didn't build pyramids.



Portraying the two cultures as interchangeable or the same is enough to earn this episode a Stereotype of the Month entry. But there's more.

The archaeologist tells them the temple is at least 500 years old, and is filled with pre-Incan artifacts. It also contains a strange metal object.

If the temple were pre-Incan, it would have to be at least 675 years old, since the Inca empire began around 1438. If it were pre-Incan or Incan, it's almost unnecessary to say it's at least 500 years old. It couldn't be much newer than 500 years old since Pizarro conquered the Inca in 1533.

The temple's entrance chamber has wooden beams across the ceiling. They would've decayed long ago.

The far wall has a carving I couldn't identify from a brief glance. The metal artifact is embedded in the carving.

In perhaps the episode's most ridiculous moment, the geeky scientist Simmons adds:The object's placement in fossiliferous rock formations suggest it's been here for at least 1,500 years. That predates this temple by a millennium.It doesn't matter how old the rock is. As I just said, the artifact is embedded in a carving on the flat, manmade wall, not in a natural formation.

To determine the chamber's age, you'd look at the tree rings in the wood, the patina on the stone surfaces, or perhaps the radioactive decay of trace elements. As for the artifact, it would have to be newer than the carving since the carving came first.



In one of the episode's best exchanges, we learn why the police have arrived:AGENT WARD: This area has lots of rebel uprisings.

SKYE: Yeah. People are fighting back against the government's mining policies. It's pretty kick-ass.This refers to the indigenous protests against the government-sanctioned mineral extraction by multinational corporations.

Ward's spin is unnecessarily negative. The Indians aren't "rebels" so much as citizens expecting the government to live up to its promises. They're fighting to have a voice in decisions affecting their land and resources.

And their protests are usually peaceful until the government responds with military force. In the ensuing confrontations, it's usually the Indians who wind up dead.

Later, the Peruvian commander Camilla Reyes how the artifact originated. Nazis fled to the region after World War II and built a weapon. But it was "lost in a clash in the jungle."

Apparently someone activated it and it flew through the air, into the temple, and smashed into the far wall. That the device missed the temple's exterior is a miracle, as is the entrance being open rather than covered with centuries of debris.

Unlike, say, the Mohawk shaman in Sleepy Hollow, there's nothing good about this episode from a Native standpoint. Unless you count an indigenous ruin as a positive no matter how phony it is.

Superman the Inca emperor

The 15 Worst Batman/Superman Stories Ever Told

By Rob Bricken5) "Superman’s Secret Kingdom!"

When Superman goes missing while searching for a crook in South America, Batman and Robin look for their friend. They are a touch surprised to discover him ruling a primitive Incan tribe after an exploding volcano gave him amnesia (#supermanproblems). The Incans, who had a legend about just this sort of thing, immediately crowned him their king. This in no way explains how the crook has become Superman’s advisor, though, and of course he immediately advises Superman to have the Dynamic Duo killed. Batman and Robin escape and paint a picture of Clark Kent turning into Superman, which is all it takes to restore his memory. (WF #111)Comment:  It goes without saying that this premise is racist. The existence of a hidden tribe, and its acceptance of a white ruler, serve to "otherize" the Indians.

In reality, Superman and Batman could find descendants of the Inca in the government, the police force, and the rest of Peruvian society. But to comic-book readers, as to most Americans, Indians exist only in remote and primitive tribes untouched by civilization.

For more on primitive South American Indians, see Natural History Museum in Bob's Burgers and Cannibal Indians in Green Inferno.

Bowling alley revives "Inca" mascot

Inca Lanes mascot offends some tribal members

By Mara KnaubKenrick Escalanti has “broken bread” with the direct descendants of the Inca people. That's why the Quechan tribal member takes it personally when a local business is using a “goofy” caricature of a Native American as a mascot.

However, a spokeswoman for the owners of Inca Lanes says it never crossed their minds that it would be considered offensive and their only intention was to revive a “nostalgic” figure.

Jerry and Nancy Thomas brought back the mascot to celebrate the reopening of a newly renovated Inca Lanes, 1250 W. 16th St. It's been a part of the business since its beginnings in 1987, when the mascot was painted on a back wall.

“We have had the character for 25 years,” said Cristy Thomas, Inca Lanes spokeswoman.

“We thought bringing him back would be nostalgic. We thought people would remember him, kind of a throwback.”Comment:  I don't know if Inca ever wore outfits like this. But the hooked nose, big teeth, and pot belly make this figure look vaguely ridiculous. It's certainly not an "honorable" depiction of the Inca.

So the owners thought this old mascot wouldn't offend anyone? Well, now they know differently. What are they going to do about it...anything?

This is such a typical situation. The owners thought it would be "fun" or "nostalgic" to bring back a stereotypical mascot. They didn't think anyone would mind because they think Indians are extinct.

Note that they're not admitting their mistake or apologizing for it...yet. They're basically flaunting their ignorance and expecting everyone to accept it. The implicit message seems to be: "Indians get upset at being depicting as primitive savages? How were we supposed to know, and why should we do anything about it?"

For more on old Indian mascots, see Decision 2012:  Silverbacks or Chiefs and EMU Revives Hurons Mascot.

James Ray's Sacsayhuaman video

Blogger Kathryn Price NicDhàna writes about a video by James Ray, the convicted sweat-lodge killer. She calls it:

The most racist thing I've seen today...This video perfectly sums up what is wrong with the newagers and others who engage in cultural appropriation. James Ray admits he has no idea what a local, possibly indigenous, woman at this sacred site is saying. She appears to be explaining the site to visitors. Ray not only ignores her words (that he could have recorded and had translated later, if she gave him permission to do so) but instead he talks over her, giving his outsider interpretation of what the symbols at this site mean, and what religious significance he thinks the site has. Of course, he uses appropriated imagery and his fantasies of Indigenous people's traditions for this, though he admits that he "doesn't understand a word" of it.

Her voice is drowned out, and his replaces it. His voice is broadcast over the Internet, as hers is reduced to background noise, and then forgotten. Misinformation and fantasy replace traditional knowledge. The appropriator says some more racist crap, laughs about the Indigenous people, and laughs about how clever he is.If James Ray had listened to Indigenous people, the three people who died in his Sedona deathlodge would still be alive. Indigenous people said, "You don't know what you're doing. Don't pretend you are leading one of our ceremonies. Don't try to lead these fake ceremonies at all. No. Stop."

But like so many lower-profile appropriators of his ilk (who, like Ray, come from the dominant culture and never interact with traditional, non-colonized Indigenous people), Ray decided he knew better than those dumb Indigenes. He knew better: how to better interpret their sacred stories, how to better lead rituals of his own devising on their sacred sites, how to talk to those spirits (despite not understanding a word of their language), how to fulfill the newagers' fantasies of mystical ceremonies they secretly knew no Indigenous person would ever teach them. If the newagers had simply listened to the people who said traditional ceremonies must be in the language of that culture, maybe they wouldn't have paid $10,000 to die.Comment:  For more on James Ray, see Ray Gets "Spiritual Comeuppance" and Ray Guilty of Negligent Homicide.

Indigenous potatoes fed Europe

How the Potato Changed the World

Brought to Europe from the New World by Spanish explorers, the lowly potato gave rise to modern industrial agriculture

By Charles C. MannWhen potato plants bloom, they send up five-lobed flowers that spangle fields like fat purple stars. By some accounts, Marie Antoinette liked the blossoms so much that she put them in her hair. Her husband, Louis XVI, put one in his buttonhole, inspiring a brief vogue in which the French aristocracy swanned around with potato plants on their clothes. The flowers were part of an attempt to persuade French farmers to plant and French diners to eat this strange new species.

Today the potato is the fifth most important crop worldwide, after wheat, corn, rice and sugar cane. But in the 18th century the tuber was a startling novelty, frightening to some, bewildering to others—part of a global ecological convulsion set off by Christopher Columbus.And:Compared with grains, tubers are inherently more productive. If the head of a wheat or rice plant grows too big, the plant will fall over, with fatal results. Growing underground, tubers are not limited by the rest of the plant. In 2008 a Lebanese farmer dug up a potato that weighed nearly 25 pounds. It was bigger than his head.

Many researchers believe that the potato’s arrival in northern Europe spelled an end to famine there. (Corn, another American crop, played a similar but smaller role in southern Europe.) More than that, as the historian William H. McNeill has argued, the potato led to empire: “By feeding rapidly growing populations, [it] permitted a handful of European nations to assert dominion over most of the world between 1750 and 1950.” The potato, in other words, fueled the rise of the West.

Equally important, the European and North American adoption of the potato set the template for modern agriculture—the so-called agro-industrial complex. Not only did the Columbian Exchange carry the potato across the Atlantic, it also brought the world’s first intensive fertilizer: Peruvian guano. And when potatoes fell to the attack of another import, the Colorado potato beetle, panicked farmers turned to the first artificial pesticide: a form of arsenic. Competition to produce ever-more-potent arsenic blends launched the modern pesticide industry. In the 1940s and 1950s, improved crops, high-intensity fertilizers and chemical pesticides created the Green Revolution, the explosion of agricultural productivity that transformed farms from Illinois to Indonesia—and set off a political argument about the food supply that grows more intense by the day.Comment:  Andean Indians didn't just find the potato. They bred it to make it a more palatable foodstuff. As the article notes:Wild potatoes are laced with solanine and tomatine, toxic compounds believed to defend the plants against attacks from dangerous organisms like fungi, bacteria and human beings. Cooking often breaks down such chemical defenses, but solanine and tomatine are unaffected by heat. In the mountains, guanaco and vicuña (wild relatives of the llama) lick clay before eating poisonous plants. The toxins stick—more technically, “adsorb”—to the fine clay particles in the animals’ stomachs, passing through the digestive system without affecting it. Mimicking this process, mountain peoples apparently learned to dunk wild potatoes in a “gravy” made of clay and water. Eventually they bred less-toxic potatoes, though some of the old, poisonous varieties remain, favored for their resistance to frost.Wikipedia provides more info on the potato:Wild potato species occur throughout the Americas, from the United States to Uruguay. The potato was originally believed to have been domesticated independently in multiple locations, but later genetic testing of the wide variety of cultivars and wild species proved a single origin for potatoes in the area of present-day southern Peru (from a species in the Solanum brevicaule complex), where they were domesticated 7,000–10,000 years ago. Following centuries of selective breeding, there are now over a thousand different types of potatoes.

The annual diet of an average global citizen in the first decade of the 21st century included about 33 kg (73 lb) of potato. However, the local importance of potato is extremely variable and rapidly changing. It remains an essential crop in Europe (especially eastern and central Europe), where per capita production is still the highest in the world, but the most rapid expansion over the past few decades has occurred in southern and eastern Asia. China is now the world's largest potato-producing country, and nearly a third of the world's potatoes are harvested in China and India.So Native people created corn and potatoes, which now feed huge numbers of people. Yet people like Andy Rooney and Ayn Rand think they were ignorant savages. These people are the ignorant ones.

For more on the subject, see Review of When Worlds Collide and Native Foods Changed the World.

Latin American Native films

The same site that lists Latin American Native children's films also lists films about Central and South American Indians.

Movies Featuring the Native Peoples of Central & South America

As before, it looks like a great resource on the subject.

The site has a list of Top 10 films that includes Apocalypto, The Mission, and The Emerald Forest. In a poll on Facebook, fans overwhelming said they liked Apocalypto the best of these three movies. Probably because it's about 20 years newer than the others.

Long-time readers know what I think of the racist and stereotypical Apocalypto. I still have no plans to see it. I voted for Emerald Forest as the best.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.

Below:  The super-scary, phony-baloney Maya culture in Apocalypto.

Did Inca have writing?

The stereotype that Indian civilizations didn't have writing is continuing to crumble. Here's the latest development:

Questioning the Inca Paradox

Did the civilization behind Machu Picchu really fail to develop a written language?

By Mark AdamsThe question that Inca scholars have grappled with since is whether or not the khipus constitute what linguists call a glottographic or "true writing" system. In true writing, a set of signs (for example, the letters C-A-T) matches the sound of speech (the spoken word "cat.") These signs must be easily decoded not just by the person who writes them, but by anyone who possesses the ability to read in that language. No such link has yet been found between a khipu and a single syllable of Quechua, the native language of the Peruvian Andes.

But what if the khipus don't fit neatly into the precise criteria established for true writing? It's possible, says Wisconsin's Salomon, that khipus were actually examples of semasiography, a system of representative symbols—such as numerals or musical notation—that conveys information but isn't tied to the speech sounds of a single language, in this instance Quechua. (By contrast, logographic languages such as Chinese and Japanese are phonetic as well as character-based.) The Incas conquered a huge number of neighboring peoples in a short time span, between 1438 and 1532; each of these groups had its own language or dialect, and the Incas wanted to integrate those new territories into their hyperefficient organizational network quickly. "It makes sense that they'd use a system that could transcend languages," Salomon says.Comment:  For more on Inca accomplishments, see Inca Roads Better Than Roman Roads and Ghosts of Machu Picchu.

Below:  "Detail of an Inca-era khipu."

Latin American Native children's films

Here's an impressively long list of movies, cartoons, and videos. The annotations are excellent, and the reviewer isn't afraid to say what's good or bad. Based on the few items I've seen, you can trust the reviewer's opinion.

Below are some capsule reviews of movies you may be familiar with:

Cartoons and Kids' Movies featuring Indians of Central and South AmericaThe Emperor's New Groove  [four arrows]

This entertaining comedy could have taken place anywhere, and at any time--or at least, wherever there is a bratty emperor threatening to demolish peasant lands to build a royal swimming pool. John Goodman is the peasant Pacha who befriends the emperor (David Spade) who has been turned into a llama. The film shows very little of Incan culture except for the wonderful backgrounds, which creatively play upon motifs of Incan art and architecture. Eartha Kitt and Patrick Warburton also provide voices, and Sting wrote an original song for this film, which came out the same year as the very similar The Road to El Dorado. The sequel, Kronk's New Groove (2005), besides showing the usual decline in quality you'd expect from a sequel, sheds the Incan theme altogether--it could pass for an episode of The Flintstones.

The Road to El Dorado  [three arrows]

Tulio and Miguel are a couple of Spanish con artists (played by Kevin Klein and Kenneth Branaugh) who flee from the police by jumping on a boat which takes them to the New World. There they try to convince the locals that they are gods, aided by the curvaceous theif Chel (Rosie Perez). Taking advantage of tensions between the emperor (Edward James Olmos) and the religious leader (Armand Assante), the two rogues manage to put an end to human sacrifice while also scoring a treasure of gold. The humor works principally through an annoyingly contemporary sarcasm, expressed through Tulio and Miguel's cliche buddy-banter. The voices, facial expressions, and gestures are all reproduced with slavish accuracy to 1990s pop culture, leaving little screentime for Mayan culture. However, the background artwork sumptuous--the architecture, artifacts, jungles, and costumes are all so beautiful that no one should mind the historical inaccuracies. And the special effects (if that is the right term when discussing animation) used for the magic sequences are also impressive. This film came out the same year as Disney's The Emperor's New Groove. Although Disney's Incan cartoon is funnier, Dreamwork's Mayan adventure sports better artwork, and will probably appeal more to fans of Indian culture.

Machu Picchu Post  [five arrows]

A boy and his llama wait for the postal airplane to arrive in Machu Picchu. When the airplane wanders into a cloud, it comes under the control of the boy's imagination. A French production, but without words. Available on its own website or on Youtube.Comment:  Many of these are available online. Others are on DVD in Spanish or English. Check them out if you have a chance.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies and Native Videos and Cartoons.

Tupac named for indigenous leader

I don't think I've posted about Tupac Shakur before. Here are the basics about him:

Tupac ShakurTupac Amaru Shakur (June 16, 1971–September 13, 1996), known by his stage names 2Pac (or simply Pac) and Makaveli, was an American rapper. Shakur had sold over 75 million albums worldwide as of 2007, making him one of the best-selling music artists in the world. In the United States alone he has sold 37.5 million records. Rolling Stone Magazine named him the 86th Greatest Artist of All Time.

In addition to his career as a rap artist, he was also an actor. The themes of most of Tupac's songs are the violence and hardship in inner cities, racism, other social problems, and conflicts with other rappers during the East Coast-West Coast hip hop rivalry.

Early life

Tupac Amaru Shakur was born on the East Harlem section of Manhattan in New York City. He was named after Túpac Amaru II, a Peruvian revolutionary who led an indigenous uprising against Spain and was subsequently executed.

His mother, Afeni Shakur, and his father, Billy Garland, were active members of the Black Panther Party in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s; he was born just one month after his mother's acquittal on more than 150 charges of "Conspiracy against the United States government and New York landmarks" in the New York Panther 21 court case.This came up because someone asked the following question on Facebook:Here, I got an anthropological question for YOU: why the hell does Tupac Shakur appeal to so many indigenous ppl, worldwide??? For serious, I don't get it. Some kinda universal language of oppression???I don't know about his music, but his parents were Black Panthers. They clearly saw a parallel between the Inca stand against European conquest and their stand against American racism and oppression.



Which Tupac?

Actually, I thought Tupac was named for Tupac Amaru:Túpac Amaru, also called Thupa Amaro (Thupaq Amaru in modern Quechua) (died 1572), was the last indigenous leader of the Inca state in Peru.Not his descendant Tupac Amaru II:Túpac Amaru II (José Gabriel Túpac Amaru b. March 19, 1742 in Surimana-Canas, Cuzco, Viceroyalty of Peru–executed in Cuzco May 18, 1781) was a leader of an indigenous uprising in 1780 against the Spanish in Peru. Although unsuccessful, he later became a mythical figure in the Peruvian struggle for independence and indigenous rights movement and an inspiration to myriad causes in Peru.

Túpac Amaru II was born José Gabriel Condorcanqui in Surimana, Tungasuca, in the province of Cuzco, and received a Jesuit education at the San Francisco de Borja School, although he maintained a strong identification with the indigenous population. He was a mestizo who claimed to be a direct descendant of the last Inca ruler Túpac Amaru.I guess his parents were really going for the "mythical figure in the struggle for independence and indigenous rights movement" thing.

For more on black-Indian connections, see Thoughts on IndiVisible and Virginia Classified Indians as Blacks.

Review of When Worlds Collide

Yet another documentary I watched on PBS for Native American Heritage Month:

When Worlds CollideIn 1492, two worlds that for thousands of years had developed completely independent of one another suddenly came into contact. In the following decades, those two worlds painfully and haltingly began to merge. Below, follow the story of When Worlds Collide; a story that examines power, religion, wealth, and the nature of identity and ethnicity in the Americas right up to our own times.You can read the entire transcript or watch the entire video online. Here's the key first segment:

Chapter 1:  The Missing Branch of the Family TreeAfter news reached Europe in 1493 that Christopher Columbus had reached land west across the Atlantic Ocean, suddenly two worlds came into contact that for thousands of years had developed completely independently of one another. In the following decades, those two worlds painfully and haltingly began to merge, transforming the nature of identity and ethnicity in the Americas and resulting in a vibrant Mestizo culture that lives on to this day.

For people who have ancestors from Europe and the Americas, the story of the European side of the family tree before contact has long been known. But it has taken far longer for the true story of the peoples of the New World before contact to become accepted in popular culture.

Great New World Cultures

According to the conventional narrative of the last five hundred years, before Columbus arrived the Americas were filled with primitive peoples who were easily conquered by a vastly superior European culture. Although scholars have long known that pre-Columbian America was home to some of the greatest cultures of the age, only recently has the general public's view of the New World started to change.

We now know that, at the time the Spanish arrived in the New World, the Inca empire in South America was far larger than any in Europe, stretching 2,400 miles from modern day Colombia to Chile. Their 10,000-mile network of stone roads snaked through jungles and over mountain passes, all leading back to their capital, Cuzco, in present day Peru. Capable of great feats of engineering, the Incas created their cities, including their spiritual retreat Machu Picchu, with a standard of precision that far exceeded the abilities of European artisans at the time. The Indians who built these great South American metropolises still live and thrive in Peru today.

It would be very ignorant to write the Incas off as just “Indians.” [In Cuzco] we can see the highest expression of a higher culture. It is evidence of how sophisticated their technology was for the time, their engineering, hydraulics and architecture. And it also reveals the relationship the Incas had with nature. They believed in maintaining an equilibrium between man and the earth. . .Man doesn't destroy nature to build something, but rather adapts his architecture to the setting.

--Carlos Paz Sanchez, director, Peruvian Cultural Center, Cuzco

In central Mexico, major civilizations had flourished since the time of the Romans. Later came the Mayas with their advanced mathematics and writing,

and the Mexica, leaders of the Triple Alliance once called the Aztecs. The Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan was home to 200,000 people and cleaner than any city in Europe.

Other civilizations lived farther north, including the Pueblo tribes with their planned communities built around one of the most sophisticated social structures in the world, and the cultures of the Mississippi River valley, who were among the most successful and productive farmers on earth.

New World Advances

The New World cultures were neither better nor worse than the cultures of Europe, but simply different. One difference was that the greatest advances of New World cultures did not involve inventing new machines but were instead driven by the effective use and management of the natural environment.

New World inventors, for example, made a major advance in one of the most important industries of the age, textile manufacturing, by growing and harvesting cochineal, an insect that lives on the prickly pear cactus, to mass-produce a true red dye. In Europe, where true red dye was so rare and expensive that only the rich and powerful wore red, this New World dye would rank only behind gold and silver in value.
See how New World inventors created a red dye that made Europeans swoon.

The talent of the New World peoples also made possible a vastly more important set of inventions: new kinds of food. In one of the great food revolutions in history, Indigenous Americans succeeded through selective breeding in turning a weed called teocintle into maize (or corn), an achievement many botanists consider the most important feat of genetic engineering in human history.

First of all, corn is a human invention. It is a creation of man. Ten thousand years ago, corn did not exist. . . Together with the early Americans, it built cities, it built cultures.

--Amado Leyva, agronomist



When corn was first introduced as a staple crop in the ancient Americas, it made tremendous population growth possible, from the Mayan peninsula all the way to what is today the United States and Canada. The people lived not just on corn but also on other crops like potatoes and tomatoes that they were the first to domesticate.

Based on this diet, some scholars believe that in the 15th century, the average person in the Americas may have been better fed than the average person in Europe. They also might have been healthier—without pigs, goats, and cows, the Americas had no small pox, measles, or similar diseases that people on other continents had caught from those animals.More interesting points

Some of the interesting points from the rest of the documentary:

Isabella and Ferdinand took another momentous step in 1492 in pursuit of religious unity: they ordered the Jews of Spain, some of whose ancestors had lived there for more than 700 years, to convert to Christianity or leave the country. Many of the Jews who converted and stayed in Spain, known as "conversos," were still suspected of being insincere in their conversions and arrested on charges of heresy by officers of the Spanish Inquisition.

Even if their conversions were deemed sincere, Christians with Muslim and Jewish ancestors were treated as inferior to Spaniards who had Christian ancestors. Such were the origins of a policy of social discrimination, a caste-like system, which denied conversos access to important positions in church and state and reserved power for a supposedly pure-blooded Christian elite. Spain would later use similar policies in the Americas to keep native peoples at the bottom of the social scale.

In response to Queen Isabella's call to convert the peoples of the Americas, waves of Catholic missionaries flooded the New World, only to find that the people living there already had their own deeply held beliefs. As a result, the New World cultures gradually blended their native beliefs and Catholicism to create new spiritual traditions, images, and symbols.

One example involves the now-legendary experience of Juan Diego, an early Indian convert to Catholicism. According to tradition, in the winter of 1531, Diego heard a woman's voice calling him from a hillside overlooking Mexico City. The woman had a serene countenance and was outlined by a luminescent glow. She also had native features, spoke Nahuatl, the pre-Columbian language of the Mexica, and looked very much the way the Mexica depicted Tonantzin, their revered fertility goddess. She told Diego that she was Mary, the mother of Jesus.

The woman that Diego encountered in the form of an indigenous goddess came to be called "Our Lady of Guadalupe," the most important Catholic icon in the Americas. As the centuries passed, this story served as a kind of creation story for the Catholic Church in Mexico. But it is also a quintessentially Mestizo story, in which Catholic and native spiritual traditions became so thoroughly fused that it is difficult to tell one where one begins and the other ends.

For the next 300 years, virtually all of the indigenous men in the region would be forced to take turns working in deadly conditions in the mine.

The historical records reveal that millions may have died while working in the mine. A metaphorical way of thinking about it is that so much silver was mined here that you could build a bridge of silver from Potosi to Spain. And with the skeletons of all the men who died here, you could build a bridge of skeletons back from Spain.

--Soledad Fortun, expert on Potosi history

Comment:  "A policy of social discrimination, a caste-like system, which ... reserved power for a supposedly pure-blooded Christian elite." Not coincidentally, this is exactly why we're hearing so many protests against healthcare reform, welfare spending, illegal immigration, gay marriage, mosques, etc. Again, they're attempts to reserve power for a supposedly pure-blooded Christian elite.

When Worlds Collide loses a bit of its power toward the end as the cultures merge and the story gets more convoluted. I might trim or rewrite some of that section. But for the most part, this is a well-written and dramatic account of the clash of civilizations. The information will be new to most people and may provide fresh insights even to those who have studied the history for years.

Rob's rating:  8.5 of 10.

For more on Native history, see Why We Believe in Columbus and America Is Ground Zero to Indians. For more PBS documentaries, see Review of For the Generations and Review of The Spirit of Sacajawea.

What if Indians conquered Europe?

The Invasion of Europe

By Zoltan GrossmanIt was 500 years ago that Callicoatl sailed across the ocean with three Aztec boats, and found a new continent, a new Eastern Hemisphere. The commemoration of this event is being marked with great fanfare and celebration. Every child has been taught the story: how Callicoatl convinced Montezuma II to support his journey, how the Aztec sailors nearly despaired on the journey, and how they "discovered" a strange white-skinned race in the "New World." But that is only part of the story. It is important that in this, the 500th anniversary of Callicoat's voyage, the record be set straight.What happened during this invasion:In the Pre-Callicoatlian era, great empires were ruled by the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Moors, and many other indigenous peoples of the Eastern Hemisphere. They contributed much to the world, as attested to by the great temples and pyramids they left behind. They had detailed knowledge of astronomy, law, agriculture, and religion. True, there were wars among these peoples, and persecution of those who did not follow the state religion. But they were no more oppressive than the empires of Montezuma II or the Inca Tupac Yupanki in the "Old World" 500 years ago. And, like in the Western Hemisphere, there were many peoples still living in harmony with the land, here in our hemisphere.

There were many other explorers who sailed to these shores, and even some who claimed to have arrived before Callicoatl--the Arawak, the Beothuk, and the Lenni-Lenape. But it was the Aztec flag of Anauak and the Inca flag of Tawantinsuyo that were first firmly planted on our soil. Soon after Callicoatl arrived, this land was named Omequauh after another Aztec-sponsored explorer. The Aztecs and Incas conquered and divided up South and Central Omequauh--the lands we call Africa, Iberia, and the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. Later, the Dakota and Ojibwe fought over and divided North Omequauh, my home continent, which we call "Europe."

Some great "European" leaders pulled together alliances of knights to resist the settlers, but our freedom fighters were never unified enough to prevail. Some of our Native peoples--among them the Irish, Corsicans, and Sardinians--were wiped out, their cultures lost to history.

You may know us as "Native Omequauhns," but we prefer to be called the "Original Europeans," or the "First Nations." We are not one people but many peoples, following different customs. We speak many tongues, which you may call "dialects," but we prefer to equate with your languages. We worship under different religions that were outlawed until recently, and are ridiculed to this day as mere superstition. The religion of my ancestors was known as "Christianity," and there are some of us who even today pray to a single god and his son.

Though we are commonly called "tribes," we have historically existed as nations, with our own borders, provinces, and capitals. The capital of my ancestors, London, was as great in its time as Cuzco or Tenochtitlan, until it was sacked by the invaders. My people, the York band of the English tribe, were once citizens of Yorkshire county (or province) in the English Nation (or "England"). Many of our peoples are not even called by their original names, but by derogatory names that others have given them. The Krauts, for instance, are more properly called the "Germans," or Deutsche in their own language. Similarly, the Frogs should be called the "French," or Français in their own tongue.Now, in the modern era:The rebirth of our European cultures has also stimulated interest on the part of mainstream non-European society. Nowadays, some children playing "Warriors and Knights" actually want to be the knights. While this trend is welcome, we also find non-Europeans romanticizing our cultures, and trying to usurp them in the same way they usurped our land. We loathe seeing non-Europeans dressing up like our own priests, and conducting the sacred catechism ceremony, for the benefit of their own curiosity. We don't appreciate seeing ethnic Dakota wearing powdered wigs, or putting on ballroom dances. And we roll our eyes whenever one of these 'wannabes' says that their great-grandmother was a Swedish princess.

There was a time when our land would be stolen and our people divided and relocated, with only a passive response. But no more. The European Wars are being rekindled, as more nations are defending the lands our ancestors are buried under. Many remember the armed confrontations at the Long Fjord Norwegian Reservation about two decades ago, or at the Lake Balaton Hungarian Reservation two years ago. If our sovereignty is not recognized, these skirmishes are likely to continue.Comment:   This reminds me of the art exhibit described in The Museum of Amexican History and The Conquest of Amexica. That exhibit went into more depth about the immediate consequences after the conquest. This essay gives a broader sense of how the conquest would've unfolded over time. So they complement each other.

A dubious scenario

Of course, a reverse conquest couldn't have happened like this. To put it mildly, it wouldn't have been a mirror image of the actual conquest. Here's why not:

1) Because of their disease-ridden livestock, crowded cities, and filthy personal habits, Europeans had much more exposure to disease. Which means they had much more immunity to disease also. Epidemics that wiped out 90% of the population probably wouldn't have swept through Europe.

If Native conquerors had arrived during the Black Plague, they might've been able to accomplish something. Assuming the Plague didn't wipe them out too, that is. Indeed, this might be the only scenario in which the Indians had a chance.

2) Even if Indians managed to cross the ocean first, the Europeans would've had metal and guns and the Indians wouldn't have. The conquest would've been a long slow process, not the lightning strikes of a Cortés or Pizarro.

Again, disease might be one factor that could've leveled the playing field. The only other thing I can think of is some sort of religious miracle. If Jesus had appeared and ordered the Pope to surrender all of Christendom to the pagans, would that have worked? I doubt it, but maybe.

3) Even if the conquest happened, Indians didn't have the same imperative to destroy other cultures and religions. I imagine a Native empire would've been like an Islamic empire: with an official religion and culture but with some tolerance for other religions and cultures.

Europeans would've been integrated into Native society, perhaps forcibly, rather than isolated on reservations. The evidence for this is that actual Native societies often integrated non-Indians (blacks, whites) without hate-based discrimination.

For more alternate histories, see Indians in Soy La Libertad and "What If" Stories About Indians. For more on the actual history involved, see Did Natives Discover Europe First?

Inca roads better than Roman roads

Construction Methods of the Ancient Inca Offer Sustainable Lessons

By Tudor Van HamptonCivil engineers and other researchers working under a $90,000 National Science Foundation grant are studying the Great Inca Road of South America for clues to help modern society build roads, bridges and other infrastructure that last longer and have a less harmful impact on the environment.

“Where modern engineers really try to tame the environment—cut through rock, move it out of the way—the Inca tried to work with the natural terrain,” says Christine Fiori, who teaches at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Va., and is the research team’s lead investigator. “It might take longer, but it lasts.”And:“In most places, it was paved for water,” says Schexnayder. “When the Conquistadors came, they said that the road was better than the Roman roads in Spain.” Incas also built other stone structures near or integrated into the road—culverts, ditches, sidewalls—to accommodate water flows and support side slopes. Hydraulic pressure, as with today’s solid-concrete retaining walls and levees, was likely not a problem due to the permeability of these stones. Today, some asphalt and concrete pavements now are being designed with permeability in mind.And:Amazingly, the Incas also standardized much of the road’s design and construction—using local labor and materials—without a written language. Though the Andean civilization employed a system of accounting, called Quipu, using knots tied in rope, much of its knowledge is thought to have been passed down orally. “Oral training and memorization was the methodology in military training,” explains Jose Barreiro, a Latin America expert at the Smithsonian. “Education in engineering technique likely followed the same method.”Comment:  I reported more on the Inca's complex engineering in Ghosts of Machu Picchu. The takeaway from these articles is that the Inca were engineers just like the Romans. That alone should crush the idea of Indians as uncivilized savages.

For more on the subject, see Review of American Indian Contributions and 100 Amazing Indian Discoveries.

Below:  "The condition of the Great Inca Road across Peru is imperiled by lack of maintenance and development. In this section near the town of Castillo, a new paved road cuts through the ancient thoroughfare." (Photo: C.J. Schexnayder)

Indians in Christian textbooks

Here's an Analysis of Two Popular Christian High School History Textbooks Regarding American Indians. Author Michael W. Simpson provides about 10 pages of analysis of the stereotypical, misleading, or false "information" in these textbooks. Among the problems:

They begin US history in 1492.

They describe the land as empty, sparsely populated, or not used productively.

They refer constantly to Europeans discovering or exploring things.

They tend to describe Indians as warlike, on the warpath, pagan, cruel, fierce, hostile, brutal, renegade, savage, committing massacres, going on rampages, scalping and torturing, etc. In other words, they treat Indians as obstacles to or problems for the "natural" expansion of whites.

They "portray the killing by whites as justified by some atrocity committed by the Indians."

They reinforce the idea of the vanishing Indian. "Weak recognition of a few paragraphs in the 20th century simply does not replace the great absence of the narrative."

They treat Indians as just another minority and don't discuss tribal sovereignty or their unique relationship with the US government.

The textbooks do note the help of friendly good Indians. They occasionally admit that the Indians weren't totally savage and beastlike. And they occasionally describe a massacre of Indians with such terms as "unfortunate" or "unsavory." But as you can tell, the overwhelming impression is negative.

To be fair, this isn't much different than the non-Christian textbooks James W. Loewen analyzed in Lies My Teacher Told Me. And I believe these textbooks were published in the mid-1990s. Things may have changed since then. (They may have gotten worse.)

A representative passage

Simpson provides one book's "best statement" on Native land and religion:The native Americans, like most early people, forsook the things they once knew about God. Rather than worshipping the Creator, they worshipped creation, particularly things they could not understand such as thunder, wind, fire and the sun. They also believed that spirits lived in the mountains, waters, trees, plants, and animals around them. Because superstition kept the Indians from working together to develop the land in which they lived, America would remain an untamed wilderness until the Europeans arrived.Wow. So much wrong here:

How could Indians forsake what "they once knew about God"? Is this book seriously suggesting that Indians descended from a lost tribe of Israel? That Jesus visited them at some point and they spurned his message?

It's more correct to say Indians worshiped the Creator and creation, or the Creator through creation. And there's nothing wrong with that.

No one understood "thunder, wind, fire, and the sun" until a couple centuries ago. In 1492 Europeans were as ignorant about these things as Indians were.

Why would worshiping creation or spirits keep Indians from working together? There's no connection between the two.

With their clans, moieties, and societies, Indian tribes were the epitome of working together for a common goal. Most tribes were more unified than European villages of the same size. Indeed, that's why conservatives call them "socialist" or "communist"--because they supposedly put their community ahead of individuals.

Indians did work and change the land, of course. They burned forests or prairies and farmed the land. They built irrigation channels, villages and cities, pyramids and temples, burial mounds and other earthworks, etc. They just didn't do enough of it to satisfy the textbook writers.

Undeveloped, developed...didn't matter

Of course, we know what happened when Europeans encountered the Aztec and Inca empires--full-fledged civilizations as complex and sophisticated as their own. They deemed them decadent, corrupt, pagan, unholy--regular Sodoms and Gomorrahs of sin and depravity. Even though these Indians had developed the land, they had to go too.

You can bet this would've happened in the US and Canada as well. The Europeans didn't care what they found because they were bent on expansion and conquest. If disease wiped out the Indians and left the land unpopulated, great. If the Europeans had to coexist with Indians until they could cheat them and steal their land, no problem. If they encountered massive roadblocks such as the Aztec or Inca empires, they slaughtered the Indians and destroyed their civilizations. All in the name of Christ.

This is why blaming Indian deaths on disease is a dodge. The Europeans killed or enslaved Indians whenever they needed to. Their actions show a genocidal intent regardless of the diseases' effects.

While most Indians died of disease, Europeans committed genocide against the rest of them. This happened before, during, and after the waves of illness. Disease was merely a "provident" tool of the genocidal onslaught. Had millions of Indians not sickened and died, they would've received the same treatment as the Indians of the Caribbean, Central America, and the Andes.

Simpson's conclusion:The two textbooks reviewed here are popular among Christian schools and home schoolers. The textbook remains a central artifact of what is taught. College teachers can expect more of these students in their classes [who are] motivated to speak by their perceived victimization from humanist secularism. Teachers dealing with American Indian issues will be confronting students taught from texts that glorify discoverers and explorers and depict native peoples in very negative ways.Yep. This is what's behind Arizona's move to curtail ethnic studies. The nationwide protest against mosques. And much of the conservative agenda. It's all about maintaining white, Christian control over America.

For more on this conservative Christian propaganda, see:

"A savage people" in 1996 encyclopedia
Villaraigosa's pro-California propaganda
Custer's Last Stand and ethnic studies
Replacing Jefferson with Calvin
Conservatives want Christian textbooks
White History Month needed?
Educating Tony about genocide

For more on how to really educate students, see:

Washington curriculum tackles ignorance
The right way to teach about Indians

Ghosts of Machu Picchu

Machu PicchuPerched atop a mountain crest, mysteriously abandoned more than four centuries ago, Machu Picchu is the most famous archeological ruin in the Western Hemisphere and an iconic symbol of the power and engineering prowess of the Inca. In the years since Machu Picchu was discovered by Hiram Bingham in 1911, there have been countless theories about this "Lost City of the Incas," yet it remains an enigma. Why did the Incas build it on such an inaccessible site, clinging to the steep face of a mountain? Who lived among its stone buildings, farmed its emerald green terraces, and drank from its sophisticated aqueduct system? NOVA joins a new generation of archeologists as they probe areas of Machu Picchu that haven't been touched since the time of the Incas and unearth burials of the people who built the sacred site. "Ghosts of Machu Picchu" explores the extraordinary trail of clues that began on that fateful day in 1911 and continues to the present.As usual in these shows, Ghosts of Machu Picchu promises to answer questions, reveal mysteries, and share secrets. In fact, Mysteries or Secrets of Machu Picchu would've been a more accurate title.

For all I know, people may have known the information in Ghosts of Machu Picchu for decades. Whether the info is new or old, it does paint a coherent picture of Machu Picchu's story.

Who and what

According to Ghosts of Machu Picchu, Pachacuti, the founder of the Inca empire and first emperor, ordered Machu Picchu built. (It took so long that it couldn't have been anyone else.) The place served as a royal estate, a peaceful retreat for worship and rest with the royal staff.



"An actor portrays the imposing emperor-warrior Pachacuti."

Why and where

Ghosts of Machu Picchu endorses the "sacred landscape" theory. The Inca derived power by being physically connected to mountains, which they considered deities. Machu Picchu was perfectly situated for this belief. It had "views to sacred peaks, proximity to holy water, and alignment with four powerful mountain gods."

That made it a "formidable symbol of Inca power," a "spectacular boast" by Pachacuti about how great and godlike he was. Every time the Inca looked up, they could see the living deity in his divine location.

How

The famous stonework isn't necessarily a mystery. The Inca used a granite quarry on the site. They laboriously pounded the stones into shape with other stones. They rolled them into place with logs, then pounded off the rough edges until they were smooth.

What's interesting is the complex engineering needed to make the site usable. Before anything else, the Inca built terraces to shore up the mountain and hold it in place. They put layers of gravel and rock in the terraces and under the site itself to draw off the 76 inches of rainfall per year.

Fifty to 60% of their effort went into this underground drainage system. Without it, the soil under Machu Picchu would've turned to mud and slid away.



"Wright's excavation revealed a vast underground drainage system with layers of topsoil, sandy gravel, and granite waste rock."

What happened

The short-lived Inca empire was devastated by disease and civil war. People drifted away from Machu Picchu and didn't return because they were occupied elsewhere. All but the royal servants forgot about it. When the Spanish came, it basically had been abandoned, so they never learned about it. It remained untouched until Hiram Bingham rediscovered it in 1911.

An interesting note about Bingham: He thought he had found Vilcabamba, the undiscovered last stronghold of the Inca. Why? Because he thought 4/5 of the skeletons he found were women. Which meant they were the Virgins of the Sun who would've accompanied the emperor to his final redoubt.

One problem: Later researchers reexamined the skeletons and learned many of them were men. Bingham had assumed they were women because they were small. But all Peruvian Indians are small compared to Europeans. Oops.

Meanwhile, no one has ever located Vilcabamba. It remains a real Inca mystery.

Rob's mini-review

Ghosts of Machu Picchu effectively uses recreations and computer graphics to enhance its story. It answers all the questions it sets out to answer. It's one of the better Native-themed documentaries I've seen, and well worth your time.

For more on the subject, see Review of 4Real Peru and Simpsons Visit Machu Picchu.

Below:  "While impressive today, Machu Picchu would have been an even greater site to behold in the late 1400s, with gleaming white granite walls topped by golden-colored thatched roofs."

Aztec, Inca, and Avatar-inspired fashion

Jean Paul Gaultier:  Ava Gardner Avatar

By Godfrey Deeny“I saw 'Avatar' and, like everyone, found it extraordinary. And from there, I began thinking of nature and ecology, and the Latin American tropics and from there it was not very far to Mexico,” explained Gaultier, seconds after posing for photos with Ukrainian actress Olga Kurylenko.

His best looks were his most audacious, mixing the immense quality of his Paris atelier with his own wickedly clever imagination--like an Eldorado gold zibeline satin jacket worn over green tights painted with Aztec motifs and paired with conquistador boots, or a thoroughly remarkable burnished column with turquoise stone appliqués worn by Poland’s Magdalena Frackowiak, the model getting to wear the best looks this season in Paris.

And in case things got a little too literal, the couturier varied the pace with outlandish leather bags that looked like they really were made of coconut leaves, and a space age, revealing violet chiffon boudoir dress--think Princess Leia-lands-in-Machu-Picchu--and a golden nose plate.Comment:  To see all the outfits, go to Jean Paul Gaultier Spring 2010 Haute Couture.

I think the second outfit below is the one inspired by the Aztecs. The third one may be inspired by Avatar.

Machu Picchu Post

Here's an animated film about the unexpected encounter between a young Peruvian boy and an airmail pilot.



Check out the official website and the "making of" description. The latter says:When we made 'Machu Picchu Post', we were three students at the 3D school Supinfocom Arles in France, in advanced computer graphics classes: Clement Crocq, Margaux Durand-Rival and Nicolas Novali. As usual in the school, the last year of study is for making a full 3D short film in groups of three or four students, from the idea to the final compositing.

Close to the end of our first year in advanced CG at Supinfocom, all the students had to make up a synopsis for the final year’s short films. The ‘Machu Picchu Post’ synopsis was based on a simple concept. A young Peruvian boy and his lama are sitting, bored, and a mail plane loses some letters over the boy's house. The boy takes a letter, makes a paper plane and starts to play but everything he does to the paper plane happens to the real plane, until a final psychedelic trip in a fantastic Inca world occurs when the boy decides to paint on the paper plane with paint pigments.

We felt it had potential for strong and delirious graphics, a good directing challenge (connecting the world of the boy, of the pilot, the psychedelic trip) because we wanted something dynamic and fluid, and a good opportunity for making something fresh and fun.

At the end of June 2007, we were finishing our different school works and improving the ‘Machu Picchu Post’ script. We started to make the first designs of the characters, illustrations for the different scenes and the storyboard of the short. With a 2D animatic, we gathered a better idea of the timing of each scene. We started to have more precise ideas for the psychedelic trip.

We spent the summer researching: clothes for the pilot; the plane; lama and the boy. We explored pictures of Peru, Machu Picchu and all the Inca cultural towns, statues, paintings and divinities, also psychedelic artists, movies and other influences. That was intense but in fact was useful for the rest of the production.I think this is a great little film. It's sort of a cross between The Emperor's New School and an old barnstorming movie. There's a sense of Native style (though the filmmakers are apparently French), no heavy-handed message, and no blatant stereotypes (other than the brief bit of magic). The protagonist gets props for making a paper airplane, which shows he's not some primitive savage who's clueless about the world.

If I were the teacher of this class, I'd give Machu Picchu Post an "A" grade. I'd also encourage the students to enter it in film competitions. It seems like a winner to me.

For something that seems related but isn't see Inca Airplanes in Journeyman. For more on the subject, see Native Video and Cartoons.

Inca in Excavation

The latest report from correspondent DMarks on the novels of James Rollins. First, a summary of the book from Rollins's website:

ExcavationHigh in the Andes, Dr. Henry Conklin discovers a 500-year-old mummy that should not be there. While deep in the South American jungle, Conklin’s nephew, Sam, stumbles upon a remarkable site nestled between two towering peaks, a place hidden from human eyes for thousands of years.

Ingenious traps have been laid to ensnare the careless and unsuspecting, and wealth beyond imagining could be the reward for those with the courage to face the terrible unknown. But where the perilous journey inward ends--in the cold, shrouded heart of a breathtaking necropolis--something else is waiting for Sam Conklin and his exploratory party. A thing created by Man, yet not humanly possible. Something wondrous...something terrifying.Hmm. Sounds terrifyingly and wondrously derivative. Here's DMarks's mini-review:"Excavation," heavily Inca-involved, is the last one I completed. It is a cut below all the others. The plot, characters, and scientific McGuffin don't measure up to the other ones, and the Inca and Indian characters aren't as good as the others and come closer to being stereotypical than in his other novels.Comment:  I gave Rollins's Black Order a 7.5 of 10. DMarks says Excavation is worse.

I rarely read books that I think will be a 7.0 or less--because so many books are better. Therefore, I'd say give Excavation a pass.

For more on the subject, see Indiana Jones and the Stereotypes of Doom and The Best Indian Books.

Inca dog for the Obamas?

Peru offers bald dog of Incas to ObamasPeruvians crazy about their national dog, a bald and often toothless breed popular among Incan kings, offered Monday to send a hypoallergenic puppy to the Obama family.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has promised daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, a new pet for the White House. But Malia is allergic to most breeds, he said Friday as speculation swirled about the dog the family would choose.

Owners of the Peruvian Hairless Dog, a breed dating back 3,000 years and depicted in pre-Hispanic ceramics, say it is perfect for kids who are sensitive to dogs.

"They do not cause any type of allergy and are very friendly and sweet," said Claudia Galvez, 38, director of the Friends of the Peruvian Hairless Dog Association.The LA Times's pet blog adds:If he is sent to the United States, Ears will officially be named Machu Picchu (which is really too bad because, truth be told, his name was the only thing that made us think those big flappers were actually something cute). To L.A. Unleashed, he'll always be Ears.Comment:  I see Obama as more of a cat person, like me. If you're going to get a dog like Ears, you might as well get a cat instead.