A Paracas textile poncho is displayed during a media presentation, at the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History of Peru in Lima, Peru, Monday, June 16, 2014. The poncho is among the first batch of ancient Paracas textiles that Sweden is returning to Peru 80 years after they were smuggled out by diplomat Sven Karell. In the early 1930s the Swedish consul had secreted them out of Peru after they were discovered in the Paracas Peninsula, a desert south of Lima where the extremely dry climate helped protect the Alpaca wool fibers.
The Swedish consul had secreted them out of Peru after they were discovered in the Paracas Peninsula, a desert south of Lima where the extremely dry climate helped protect the Alpaca wool fibers.The intricately colored shroud, measuring 41 inches by 21 inches, and 88 other textiles were donated to a museum in Gothenburg in the early 1930s by Swedish consul Sven Karell. Despite being some 2,000 years old, “it is perfectly preserved,” said Krzystof Makowski, a University of Warsaw archaeologist who has studied the shroud as a professor at the Catholic University of Peru. “Across the world, the discoveries of textiles of this age are much rarer than any precious metal.”
This textile is so complex, it includes 80 different color tones and sub tones such as blue, green, yellow, red and orange. It is divided into 32 trames decorated with items resembling condors, frogs, cats, corn, cassava and human-like figures. Some researchers believe that the shroud may be a sort of calendar related to the tracking of farming seasons... according to Jahl Dulanto, archaeologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who leads the Paracas investigation team at the Catholic University of Peru.
Franklin Briceno. Associated Press. 2018
