Women are barred from entering the kiva. It’s dark and cool — you have to descend a long ladder to access it. Inside the men talk about about hunting, tinker with weapons or just relax.
Sounds nice, right?
Unfortunately you’d have to travel back to 12th Century Peru to visit one. “Kivas were like men’s clubs,” explains Dr. Jonathan Haas, curator of The Ancient Americas, the latest permanent exhibit at The Field Museum.
We’re strolling through this sprawling exhibit, discussing life for the average, old-school Peruvian guy. And for the most part, life was good. Rather than the agrarian timetable by which modern man lives, ancient South, Central and North American men collected food or tracked llamas for just four hours a day, then spent the remainder playing with their kids or hanging in the kiva. “We work much harder than these hunters or gatherers ever did,” Haas says.
Sure, Incan rulers would draft all male citizens into labor for a few months each year. But after days spent building roads or erecting monuments, the men would have access to huge vats of corn beer.
In addition to containing beer, clay pots also served as birth-control tutorials. Smaller pots were adorned with depictions of men and women making love, but rather than titillating, these were used to promote non-procreative sex acts. Similar pots also communicated threats to those who would consider harming a society; one depicts a prisoner with a poisonous snake clamped onto his genitalia.
That fate was a walk in the park compared with the unlucky prisoners selected for human sacrifice. There’s a stone box at the museum that may have been used to store hearts recently ripped from men’s chests.
And don’t most guys know exactly how that feels?
Entry to The Ancient Americas is free with paid admission to The Field Museum (fieldmuseum.org). Unlike the kiva, women are allowed.