Q&A on the oldest known "book" in North America

"If you look upriver as you cross the Pecos River bridge heading west toward the historic town of Langtry, Texas, you will see nestled high on the canyon wall a small, shallow cave. Near dusk on a winter’s day the sun fills this rockshelter with light, illuminating the images painted thousands of years ago in red, yellow, black, and white. Those of us who know the paintings are there wave a

greeting as we pass. Hundreds of thousands of people, however, cross the bridge and never know they are within a stone’s throw of perhaps the oldest known “book” in North America: the rock art mural in White Shaman Shelter." 

—From the Introduction to Carolyn Boyd's The White Shaman Mural.  

The prehistoric hunter-gatherers of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas and Coahuila, Mexico, created some of the most spectacularly complex, colorful, extensive, and enduring rock art of the ancient world. Perhaps the greatest of these masterpieces is the White Shaman mural, an intricate painting that spans some twenty-six feet in length and thirteen feet in height on the wall of a shallow cave overlooking the Pecos River.

In The White Shaman Mural, Carolyn E. Boyd takes us on a journey of discovery as she builds a convincing case that the mural tells a story of the birth of the sun and the beginning of time—making it possibly the oldest pictorial creation narrative in North America. We asked Carolyn Boyd about her fascinating work and how we can appreciate the White Shaman mural and the region's history.

View of the Pecos River and White Shaman Shelter from across the canyon. Photo by Rupestrian Cyberservices. Courtesy of Shumla Archaeological Research and Education Center.

What is the significance of the White Shaman mural?

The White Shaman mural is perhaps the oldest known “book” in North America. It is a visual narrative exquisitely detailing a very ancient and enduring story of creation – the story of how the sun was born and time began. The narrative was painted by nomadic foragers at least 2,000 years ago on the limestone wall within a small rockshelter overlooking the Pecos River. It documents a story that was passed down to later generations of Uto-Aztecan speaking people, such as the ancient Nahua (Aztec). It is a story still told today by other Uto-Aztecan speaking peoples, such as the Huichol of Mexico.

The mural works on multiple levels of interpretation. Not only does it communicate an ancient creation narrative, it also metaphorically represents the heavens as viewed by people living in the Lower Pecos during the Late Archaic. The imagery relates the sun’s daily cycle and the apparent path of the sun along the ecliptic throughout the year. It documents the changing seasons and the beginning and ending of ages. Beyond its portrayal of real-world cosmological events and cycles of nature, the mural also articulates the ongoing transformations of every person throughout the course of their lives.

Steve Bourget on Sacrifice, Violence, and Ideology Among the Moche

In a special precinct dedicated to ritual sacrifice at Huaca de la Luna on the north coast of Peru, about seventy-five men were killed and dismembered, their remains and body parts then carefully rearranged and left on the ground with numerous offerings. The discovery of 

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this large sacrificial site—one of the most important sites of this type in the Americas—raises fundamental questions. Why was human sacrifice so central to Moche ideology and religion? And why is sacrifice so intimately related to the notions of warfare and capture?

Steve Bourget is a world authority on the Moche and author of Sex, Death, and Sacrifice in Moche Religion and Visual Culture and coeditor of The Art and Archaeology of the Moche: An Ancient Andean Society of the Peruvian North Coast. He is currently a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at the Université de Montréal. We asked him some questions about his latest book, Sacrifice, Violence, and Ideology Among the Moche: The Rise of Social Complexity in Ancient Peru. His study uncovers some fascinating relationships, like how El Niño conditions influenced broader aspects of Moche religion and cosmology, how a concomitant relationship emerges between the practice of human sacrifice and the rise of social complexity across New World societies, and how uniting iconography with archaeology helps scholars deepen our understanding of the Moche people and their power structures.

Why was human sacrifice so central to Moche ideology and religion?

The practice of human sacrifice in any ancient society is a complex matter. Each situation must be approached with caution and understood within its own cultural context. In the Moche case, the archaeology and its visual culture have shown that this ritual practice was closely related to their power structure. In death, high-ranking individuals are regularly buried with retainers who appear to have been sacrificed, and in life, sophisticated sacrificial rituals were apparently carried out to celebrate the link between these individuals with the divine domain.

Remains of a pair of victims, precisely laid in opposite directions on the ground of the sacrificial site

Ritual violence and sacrifice clearly index the power of the ruler and separate its status from that of the Moche population in general. The most complex rituals depicted in the iconography, the remains of which have sometimes been detected in the archaeological record, often culminate with human sacrifice and the exchange of the blood of the victims between high-status individuals. In these contexts, the rulers possess, like divine beings, the power over life and death. The presence of the same individuals instigating the cycle of ritual violence in the scenes of ritual warfare leading to capture and, eventually, human sacrifice indicates that they oversee all the aspects of the ritual process. They are both the instigators of this violence and the recipients of the benefits of sacrifice.

Therefore, the use of ritual violence and human sacrifice is structurally associated with the development of Moche power and the nature of rulership. In addition to creating a fundamental difference between the rulers and the rest of the society, human sacrifice reinforces the sacred dimension of these individuals and that of their lineages.

Explain how the ritual ecology of El Niño conditions influenced broader aspects of Moche religion and cosmology.

Firstly, the term "ritual ecology" refers to the use of the natural environment in its broadest sense to anchor and validate ideological precepts and religious beliefs disseminated by Moche elite. Therefore, the animal species and the environmental conditions selected by the Moche systematically contributed to highlighting and reinforcing certain ideological aspects. El Niño conditions were embedded in this overall scheme to create a symbolic system of everything that was both ritually and ideologically significant for the exercise of power. By using such an elaborate metaphorical system centered around the impact of El Niño events in the north coast region, their objective was to provide a rationale for the exercise of power and rulership. During the humid conditions brought by El Niño, the land is drastically transformed, the desertic landscape is transformed, countless animal species thrive and multiply, both on the land, in the air and in the waters, and the limitless power of the gods become apparent in the physical world. Harnessing the power of this climatic event to serve their ideological needs has to be recognized as one of the most brilliant ideas ever devised by an Early State society.