(14 Dec 1995) Spanish/Nat

A museum in Peru is showing one of the world's largest collections of pre-Columbian art.

The collection includes mummies and pottery from several civilizations which lived in Peru around eight thousand years before Christ.

Five-hundred years after the Spanish conquest, artefacts from those civilizations are still being unearthed.

From daily pre-Columbian artefacts to mummies, the Rafael Larco Herrera Archeological Museum illustrates the life and death of the Mochicas of Peru.

The museum was founded by Peruvian Rafael Lorca Hoyle in the late 1920s.

He named the museum after his father, a lover of ancient art.

Lorca Hoyle was not only an avaricious collector but he was also a keen researcher, helping to divide the Mochicas into different cultural periods.

The collection includes mummies, ceramics and metal artefacts.

These artefacts have helped anthropologists study the ways of life of Peru's ancient civilizations.

SOUNDBITE: (Spanish)
"Los Mochicas, se puede ver en el Deposito del Museo Larco, tuvieron representaciones de toda la fauna, de todos los animales que conocieron - de los prisioneros, de los guerreros, de los castigos, de la sociedad, de las personas que vivieron en ese entonces como los son estos huacos retratos. Tambien representaron su religion, la arquitectura, la medicina - todas las costumbres distintas que tuvieron."
TRANSLATION:
"The Mochicas - as you can see in the Larco Museum - had representations of all the fauna, of all the animals they knew, of prisoners, warriors, punishments, society, of people who lived back then such as those in these ceramic pottery pictures. They also represented their religion, architecture, medicine - all the different customs they had."
SUPER CAPTION: Andres Alvarez Calderon, Executive Director, Larco Museum

The museum boasts over 45-thousand pieces from a period spanning eight-thousand years before Christ.

Some "huaco" -- or Peruvian ceramic pottery found in pre-Columbian tombs -- depict people's daily lives.

Priceless gold pieces and other jewelry are displayed in the "Metals Room."

The pre-Colombians also left a glimpse into their active sexual lives.

SOUNDBITE: (Spanish)
"Tambien se puede encontrar la ceramica erotica que obviamente tambien fue un pasaje de la vida cotidiana de estos personajes. Entonces existe un importante grupo de piezas de esa cultura que representan esta ceramica erotica que son bastante interesantes debido a que nos permiten tener la posibilidad de observar de una manera escultorica las practicas sexuales de ese entonces."
TRANSLATION:
"Erotic ceramic pottery can also be found - obviously it was also a part of daily life of these people. So an important group of pieces of that culture exist represented by the erotic ceramics which are very interesting since they allow us to observe - in sculpture form - sexual practices of the time."
SUPER CAPTION: Andres Alvarez Calderon, Executive Director, Larco Museum

Within the pre-Columbian universe, sex is just one more element.

The erotic room is divided by themes. Some pieces seem to have a moral message, while others a more humorous one.

And despite modern moral standards, museum visitors may find themselves shocked at their ancestors' lifestyles.

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