纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 024帕拉卡斯纺织品(5)（在线收听）

It's impossible to know exactly what our embroidered figures represent. Apparently floating in the air, with bared teeth and clawed hands, it is easy to imagine that they are not human, but creatures from the spirit world. But as they hold daggers and severed heads, perhaps we are in the realm of ritual sacrifice. What is this killing for? And why would you embroider it on a textile? We're clearly in the presence here of a very complex structure of belief and myth, and the stakes are as high as they can be. For these are embroideries about life and death. Mary Frame again: ...

"The severed heads, the wounds, the strange posture, seem to be depicting a whole set of stages of transformation between the human into the mythic ancestor. Blood and fertility seem to be themes that are intertwined with this. These textiles are really directed like a supplication for success with crops. Peruvian land is very marginal, it's terrifically arid down there; I think the people had an intense focus on rituals that would ensure continual success. Water is necessary for plant growth - blood is conceived of as being even more potent for plant growth."

Mary Frame's hypothesis sounds convincing, not least because when the first Europeans arrived in central and south America over two thousand years later, they found societies structured around blood sacrifices to ensure the continuing cycle of seasons and crops. So these four little embroideries give us a huge amount of information, and stimulate a great deal of speculation, about how the people of the Paracas lived, died and believed. But quite apart from that, they are great imaginative achievements, masterpieces of needlework that still speak directly to contemporary fashion designers like Zandra Rhodes: