ANCIENT CULTURE DISCOVERED IN AMAZON
Friday 19th April 1996 / posted April 28, 1996
Source: The Independent newspaper
David Keys
Archaeology Correspondent
Archaeologists have discovered an unknown ancient culture in the heart
of the Amazon jungle - including the oldest art ever found in the
Americas.
Dating back 14,000 years, the discovery changes the way prehistorians
have viewed the early cultural and economic development of humanity.
The discovery - published in the current issue of the US magazine
Science - shows that for the first time pre-agricultural Stone Age
humans were able to survive and flourish in equatorial rain forest
conditions.
This suggests that vast tracts of forest in Africa, South-east Asia
and Latin America are likely to have been inhabited long before
academics had previously thought, thus extending the range of the
human race's prehistoric habitable world by around 15 per cent.
The archaeologists have also succeeded in dating cave paintings on the
site - Pedra Pintada near Santarem in Brazil - to 13-14,000 years ago,
making them the oldest art works ever found in the New World.
The paintings - dated by hi-tech thermo-luminescence and calibrated
radio -carbon dating - show fish, birds, deer and humans, apparently
masquerading as insects, stars and comets.
One painting shows a figure with and insect-like head ad body, but
human limbs. Another bizarre creature is shown falling from the sky
and has a human torso, a giant eye, and rays radiating from it's head.
Other compositions portray hunters with spears and spear throwers, and
woman having babies.
Similar paintings are scattered over hundreds of sites along a 30-mile
stretch of the River Amazon.
The excavations - led by the US archaeologist Anna Roosevelt of
Chicago's famous Field Museum of Natural History - have also revealed
one of the oldest securely dated human occupation sites (almost 14,000
years old) found in the New World.
Dr Roosevelt suspects that the prehistoric inhabitants of Pedra
Pintada were among the first human colonists of South America and that
vast nurbers of other rock paintings else where in Brazil are also
likely to date from this early period.
"It was thrilling when we first reached the earliest occupation level
in the cave. Now we plan to look for more sites - this time submeged
under the waters of the Amazon." she said.
Huge aggregations of ancient domestic rubbish, mainly shellfish food
debris, suggest pele had permanent settlements in the New World more
than 8,000 years ago - not that long after similar developments
occurred in the Old World.
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