For example, pre-colonial masquerade in the Americas was altered so that traditional gods, heroes, and spirits were reinterpreted as devils and demons from Christian mythology, and new heroes such as Jesus of Nazareth, angels, and saints were introduced to homogenize and indoctrinate colonized cultures. In societies colonized by proselytizing Christians, masquerade was heavily discouraged by missionaries and colonial governments, either outlawed or redirected into Christian themes. Christianity discouraged many cultural traditions, and the adoption of firearms and steel weapons rendered the old protections ineffective in any case. The Polynesian warriors of Hawaii, for example, were known to wear protective and decorative war masks made of gourds and plant fibers, but these were abandoned after widespread conversion of the islanders to Christianity. The Soviet Union also demonized Slavic cultural masking traditions on the same basis from the era of Stalin until its dissolution in 1990.Įven when the cultural identity of the society survives intact, intercultural contact has radically altered or extinguished masking traditions. Classic artifacts such as masks used in Nuo cultural drama were destroyed as “counterrevolutionary,” and performances were met with draconian punishments. More recently, the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-76) attempted to eliminate the cultural traditions of Chinese peoples in the service of national unity under a strictly pragmatic Communist ideology. However, properly speaking, the niqab and burqa are not masks but veils as their purpose is the systematic subordination of women rather than use in cultural rituals. The main exception has been the niqab or burqa worn by Arab women to cover their faces, which is sometimes modestly decorative, as some batula attest. The result is that folk masking traditions have largely been stamped out, especially those in which the mask represents gods or spirits.

However, Islamic doctrine has generally been interpreted to prohibit figural art representing human beings or animals. Late medieval Islamic warriors sometimes wore protective masks that included elaborate decoration. The great Abbasid Arab expansion in the eighth through thirteenth centuries, and Ottoman Turk Empire of the fourteenth until 1924, tended to spread Islam across the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa. Muslim woman wearing a decorative bandula in Bandar Abbas, Iran. Tribal peoples were ruthlessly culled by disease, lethal slavery, and sometimes genocidal campaigns. The disappearance of many ancient masking traditions was assured by the European campaigns of conquest and exploitation in many parts of the New World during the Age of Discovery. The oldest such mask is the what appears to be a crest mask representing an aardvark, discovered in Angola and dating back to around 900 C.E. Wood masks were probably used for living masquerade much earlier, but due to weathering few have survived.

The earliest surviving masks are made of stone or seashell, and were found in the region now known as Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. Mayan vases show such dancers as wearing masks representing the titular animals. For example, the Popol Vuh, the origin story of the Mayan (K’iché) civilization, tells how the god-hero twins Hunahpuh and Ixbalanque entertained the lords of the underworld (Xibalba) with dances, including various dances named after animal such as the weasel ( kux) and the armadillo ( iboy). It is known that the ancient peoples of the Americas used masquerade in war, religion, and entertainment, although the only surviving artifacts are death masks. In many cases, only archaeological fragments, drawings, or photographs remain to tell us what the masks looked like and give a sense of how the societies used them. Many types of masquerade used by preliterate societies have disappeared from history, frequently along with the societies themselves. Drawing of a mask from the extinct Calusa people, who once inhabited what is now southern Florida, United States but were exterminated by Spanish invaders.Ĭultural masks are known to have been worn long before human beings developed written language.

Drama masks