Even Better Than Today’s Textiles

People living long ago on the hot coastal strip of Peru created some of the world’s most beautiful textiles. Archaeologists have found an amazing quantity of these in “mummy bundles” tucked away in tombs. These ancient people of the Andean region, like those of Egypt, believed the dead needed articles from this life to use in their future life. Some fragments of the cloth are 3,000 years old, but the finest examples belong to the period between about AD 300 and 1000. The people who wove these textiles spun fine, smooth yarn of cotton or of the wool of alpacas, llamas, and vicunas. They used most weaves known today and some too complicated for modern looms. They were expert dyers, with almost 200 hues at their command. With their many-coloured yarns they worked out gay, elaborate designs. They wove cloth ingeniously into the shapes of garments and other articles, for they did not cut and sew.