We spent the morning touring the Centro Historico where the remains of colonial era buildings, churches and Art Deco buildings are at every corner. The churches are packed with ornate guilded altars with amazing carvings in mahogany covered with gold leaf and other timbers which have the appearance of rock.
Nearby is the Museo Larco which has archaeological evidence of the way of life of people in this region around 8,000 BC. This is long before the Incas and Spanish and show that the peopling of South America in parallel to those people in Egypt, the Middle East and Asia. What is difficult to prove here is how, or if, these early peoples were connected with each other.
In Europe, the Middle East and Asia is easier to explain because of the trade and communication that took place across the Mediterranean region and along the Silk Routes. In The Americas mountain ranges and high altitude deserts made these connections difficult. It is generally accepted that people migrated from what is today Russia using the land bridge across what is today the Bering Strait. This morning we saw storage jars decorated with the faces of people who used them, some of whom resembled the Inuit of today. There is some thought being given to the idea that early people may have made sea journeys across what is today the Pacific because sea levels then were much lower than those of today making the Pacific smaller. However, this is work in progress.
After lunch we walked to the Miraflores cliffs and its park lined promenade atop the crumbling cliffs. Here we came across the Paddington Bear statue, a gift from the British Embassy in July 2015. The statue was designed by the British comedian Stephen Fry and wears a Union Jack coat. Paddington is carrying a suitcase but we were unable to determine whether it still contained marmalade sandwiches.
