Gold and the Incas exhibition puts wrought magic on display

THE Gold and the Incas exhibition impresses the viewer above all with the unrelenting grimness of a culture based on fear.

Wrought magic

THREE great centres of civilisation arose in the Neolithic Age across the Eurasian land mass - in the Near East, in the west of India and in China - and in due course these Mediterranean, South Asian and East Asian civilisations came to dominate the world, converting those peoples who had not reached the same level of development on their own, and influencing each other in ways that continue to unfold today.

But there were two other centres of civilisation that arose in another world, cut off from and unknown to Eurasia: in Peru and later in Mexico, populations discovered agriculture and subsequently developed complex urban societies with hierarchical social structures, the division of labour and specialisation of crafts and professions. Only the Maya developed a form of writing, but all built impressive temples and other stone structures.

After the European discovery of the new world at the end of the 15th century, these societies were overrun by the Spanish conquistadors. The invaders were few in number but had the advantage of superior weaponry; and they were especially aided by the devastation wrought by epidemic disease.

The European discovery of America, and the age of exploration more generally, was the occasion of a massive transfer of pathogens across the world. The most notable American export was syphilis, which seems to have come back with Columbus's sailors and was first identified during the siege of Naples at the end of the 15th century. It was a terrifying scourge that was interpreted by many as an expression of divine wrath. In due course syphilis was re-exported from Europe to the south Pacific.

Europe's deadliest export to the Americas was smallpox, a disease by then endemic in much of the world - that is, established among populations that had built up a certain resistance. When it spread to a people who had no experience of it and t

herefore no resistance, the consequences were disastrous, as they were for this and other diseases among the populations of North and South America.

Europe, incidentally, had its own terrible epidemic of smallpox at the beginning of the 18th century, perhaps caused by the mutation of a more deadly strain of the virus. Most of the aged Louis XIV's family were carried off by it. The seriousness of the epidemic, however, prompted experiments with inoculation and eventually Edward Jenner's vaccination.

The Spanish were ruthless conquerors, most of whom seem to have been motivated by a desire for gold, although some were also concerned to convert the natives and save their souls. And there was a vast amount of gold, employed for decorative and ceremonial purposes, which is why the title of the NGA's Peruvian exhibition, Gold and the Incas, although at first sight cliched, has some justification.

In any case, countless artefacts from Central and South America - representing the vast majority of the treasures of the original civilisations - were melted down into bullion with no regard for their artistic or anthropological value. Those that survive, like the pieces in the present exhibition, escaped destruction because they were buried with the important men who once wore them as signs of office.

The other part of the title is also potentially misleading, although this fact is acknowledged as soon as you enter the exhibition. The Incas are by far the most famous rulers of Peru. The Spanish wrote about them at the time, and they have remained legendary within popular culture ever since. One need only think, for example, of the two volumes of the adventures of Tintin devoted to the subject and begun by Herge under the German occupation: Les Sept Boules de Cristal and Le Temple du Soleil.

But the Incas had only been ruling for a little more than a century when the Spanish arrived; they were the last heirs, rather than the creators, of civilisation in South America. As the exhibition reveals, a series of peoples ruled territories of varying extent for thousands of years, beginning from the second millennium BC, that is around the time of the Mycenaean and late Minoan periods in the Mediterranean.

All these Peruvian peoples shared very similar beliefs, perhaps because there were no other civilisations with which they could exchange ideas and from which they could adopt new ones. At the same time many of their beliefs are strikingly similar to others found around the world, supporting the theory that some ways of thinking are relatively natural to mankind.

Thus, like many others, they imagined a world divided into three levels of reality: below the earth occupied by living humanity, there was an underworld of the dead that was also the source of new life, and above was the sky, which was the domain of the gods. Humans needed to negotiate their relationship with both the other levels, and this was the object of religious ceremonies and sacrifices.

In common with all agricultural peoples, their main concern was ensuring the regular growth of crops through ceremonies to ensure the goodwill of the gods and spirits. Occupying the east coast of the south Pacific, they were subject to the same El Nino weather system that makes farming so unpredictable in Australia, and extreme climatic disruptions associated with catastrophic El Nino cycles appear to haveended successive dynasties or cultures, as the failure of the natural order undermined faith in the magical power of the rulers.

All these cultures seem to have been based on elaborate hierarchies and ceremonies, and the ruling class seems to have signified its authority and sacred power by wearing impressive headdresses, robes - in beautiful textiles almost miraculously preserved by the dry burial conditions - and the bizarre facial ornaments in beaten gold that are the most striking things in the exhibition.

These rulers also liked to identify themselves with the fiercest animals that dwelt in the human realm, feral cats, although a more human face appears, unexpectedly, in the remarkable portrait jugs of the Moche culture. Images of animals too are sometimes disconcertingly realistic. The beautiful weavings, though made for the adornment of the rulers, afford an oblique insight into the aesthetic sensibility of the people more broadly.

But there was nothing humanistic about these cultures. When the leaders died, they were buried with a large retinue of slaves and family members, put to death, it seems, after being inebriated with corn spirit and coca. No doubt the victims were more or less willing and even persuaded of a privileged future existence with their lord in the afterlife.

The most striking aspect of pre-Columbian cultures, however, is human sacrifice. Many peoples have performed such sacrifices in a remote past or occasionally later under extreme and desperate circumstances, but most have abandoned the practice by the time we consider them as developed civilisations. For the Mycenaeans presumably and certainly among the later Greeks of the Homeric period, Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigenia was considered monstrous and even the goddess who had demanded it, Artemis, did not allow it to go through in reality. The sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis is similarly a radically extreme, almost inconceivable demand by God, and turns out to have been only a test of Abraham's faith.

The abandonment of human sacrifice, like the prohibition of cannibalism, is generally an indispensable step in social evolution; memories of these practices survive in the mythology of later periods as symbolic of deviant or savage behaviour. They stand, like the stories of Tantalus, of Atreus or of Lycaon, who was turned into wolf for offering human flesh to Zeus, at the boundaries of what is considered properly human behaviour.

In Peru, however, there does not seem to have been any social, cultural or moral progression beyond ritual killing. For three millennia, until the arrival of the Spaniards, the sacrifices continued unabated.

This kind of stasis, though common in tribal cultures, is almost unparalleled in more sophisticated ones and, as already noted, it is probably partly explained by the absence of outside influences. Another factor may be the failure of the Peruvians to develop writing. Literacy permits the growth of self-consciousness by providing the means of objectifying and reflecting on our thoughts. Writing in this sense is a technology for thinking and it is critical thinking that provides a culture with an inner motor of development and change.

In the absence of such a motor, cultures go round and round in the same circle of subsistence, but the case of Peru is striking because of the disconnection between its level of material and moral development. Although undoubtedly a civilisation in its urban structure and mastery of sophisticated technologies, beginning with agriculture and including architecture, ceramics, weaving, metalwork and so on, it is more akin to a tribal culture in its religious life dominated by rudimentary animism and magic.

In the civilisations of Eurasia, animism largely is left behind as nature is increasingly understood in a rational, philosophical or scientific manner, and religion turns towards the elaboration of purportedly universal ethical systems, social rules and forms of spiritual meditation, or the pursuit of holiness and communion with the transcendent. Magical practices may survive, but are marginalised.

In the end, for all the refinement of the artefacts on display, the Peruvian exhibition impresses the viewer above all with the unrelenting grimness of a culture based on fear of the incomprehensible workings of nature, the enforcement of the authority of the ruling class and the conviction that only the offering of inhumane sacrifices could ensure the favour of angry and arbitrary divinities.

Each of the civilisations of India, China and Europe has its own darker sides, crimes and sometimes catastrophic failures. While far from perfect, each has produced philosophies, religious beliefs, ethical systems and literary and artistic reflections on life which, various and not always compatible as they are, remain the most precious heritage of humanity. The Incas and their predecessors, to judge from this exhibition, do not seem to offer either philosophical understanding, ethical standards or spiritual insight. We are faced with the spectacle of a civilisation that provides no lesson or model for the good life; a society in which one could never wish to have lived.

Gold and the Incas: Lost Worlds of Peru, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, until April 21