The Jawa Sandcrawler kinda looks a bit like ancient pan pipes from Peru. The angled shape. The worn surface. The rusty color. These two objects from completely different worlds have an odd affinity for each other.
Did the this Peruvian musical instrument somehow land on Tatooine? Jawas found it in the desert, and thought the shape would make a nice transport vehicle.
Or maybe the ancient people of Peru once visited Tatooine, and were inspired by the Sandcrawlers.
At the very least, I like to imagine Jawas playing these pan pipes.
For anyone curious how I came across this comparison. The Peruvian pan pipes randomly popped up onto my browser from the Art Institute’s Art Tab Chrome extension. As soon as I saw these pipes, the first thing that came to mind was JAWA SANDCRAWLER.
Doing a little bit of research on the Sandcrawler on Wikipedia, the original inspiration was photographs of a NASA-designed rover created to explore alien planets. Source: The Making of Star Wars (Enhanced Edition). Once I get my hands on this book via interlibrary loan, I’ll confirm this fact. Hopefully, there will be an image of this NASA rover in the book.