Thursday 15 February 2007

Archaeology Today - again

Archaeology Today is proving to be a valuable resource for the partner of a scrapbooker to learn more about the origins of their partner's obsession.

At some point in the distant past - around 600 AD a Mega-El Nino event destroyed a Peruvian civilisation that had a unique form of scrapbooking.

The life and culture of this ancient mountain civilization was devastated by floods then droughts of almost unimaginable proportions.

The culture, which included blood sacrifices to propitiate the gods vanished almost overnight and only recently have some examples of their daily life and art been unearthed.

This has included some remarkable examples of early scrapbooking. No paper was used in the Andean art. Their medium of choice was clay pots - so I guess they were early examples of 'Off/Beyond-the-page' scrapping.

The scenes depicted reveal a rich culture which until recently had been a riddle to archaeologists. The scrappers of that culture have successfully preserved their cultural practices and I guess today's scrapbookers are trying to do the same.

I feel particularly pleased that this civilisation became extinct and did not survive to pass on its scrapping techniques to modern scrapbookers.

From what I can tell it involved challenges - much as we have today except these challenges had loosers as well as winners and after the challenge was complete the looser would be bound and their throat would be cut with the blood caught in a bowl and offered to the gods as a sacrifice.

Still I bet 'scrappers block' was never a problem.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

They may have also inadvertantly stubled on the reason for human scarifice.... it was the men venting their frustration at not having the opportunity to help relieve scrappers block: If they don't get jiggy with it, cut the jugular with it!

Deanne Stewart-Mills said...

Your blog is such a laugh. I have told all my cyberfriends about this site via a scrapbooking forum to which I belong. Many of their partners have read your posts and lamented the hobby, along with you.

Keep it up! I love reading about this hobby from the other perspective.