Caverna da Pedra Pintada (Painted Rock Cave ), is an

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

in northern

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, with evidence of human presence dating ca. 11,200 years ago.Saraceni, Jessica E. and Adriana Franco da Sá
"People of South America."
''Archaeology.'' Vol. 49, No. 4, July/August 1996. Retrieved 9 April 2012.Wilford, John Noble

''New York Times.'' 23 April 1996, Retrieved 9 April 2012. This find has challenged previous thinking about patterns of human settlement in South America.

Anna C. Roosevelt Anna Curtenius Roosevelt (born 1946) is an American archaeologist and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Chicago. She studies human evolution and long-term human-environment interaction. She is one of the leading American ar ...

, an American archaeologist and primary researcher here since 1990, believes that findings from the cave show there were Paleoindians this far south and with an independent culture that existed at the same time as other early Native Americans were active on the Great Plains of North America. Formerly researchers believed that Amazonian settlements arose later than those in the Andes, and were developed by migrants from the highlands.

Location

Caverna da Pedra Pintada is located near the town of Monte Alegre, in the

Amazon River Basin The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Bolivi ...

Pará Pará is a state of Brazil, located in northern Brazil and traversed by the lower Amazon River. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and Roraima. To the northwest are the borders of Guyana a ...

state in northern Brazil. It is the main attraction of the

Monte Alegre State Park The Monte Alegre State Park ( pt, Parque Estadual Monte Alegre) is a state park in the state of Pará, Brazil. The park covers a hilly region to the north of the Amazon River. It is known for its caves and prehistoric rock paintings, among the ol ...

, created in 2001.

Rediscovery and excavations

American archaeologist

rediscovered the cave and excavated it extensively from 1990 to 1992. The excavations were supported by the

Field Museum The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educational ...

and the

University of Illinois, Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the University of Illin ...

, with which she is affiliated. The lowest levels of the cave were radiocarbon dated and thermoluminescence dated to ca. 11,200 to 10,000 years ago. The early dates of these finds have affected the interpretation of human settlement in the Amazon Basin. Roosevelt believes that the cave's evidence supports a theory that the Amazon Basin was settled much earlier than formerly believed."SCIENTIST AT WORK: Anna C. Roosevelt; Sharp and To the Point In Amazonia"
''New York Times,'' 23 April 1996, accessed 24 April 2016

Findings

The early dates of human presence at the cave show that humans did not exclusively migrate from

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

down to the

Andes The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S ...

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

, which some archaeologists had previously believed.

"We found strong evidence that a culture quite distinct from the North American Paleoindian culture, but contemporary with it, existed more than 5,000 miles to the south", Anna Roosevelt has said. "Paleoindians traveled far and adapted to a diverse range of habitats. The existence of distinct cultures east of the Andes suggests that North American big-game hunters were not the sole source of migration into South America."

The lowest levels of the cave yield charred floral and faunal remains and stone tools, including spear points, suggesting that the earliest visitors were

hunter-gatherer A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fung ...

s in the humid tropical environment. These Paleoindians used the cave frequently over a span of 1,200 years, leaving remains of fruits, and seeds, including

Brazil nut The Brazil nut (''Bertholletia excelsa'') is a South American tree in the family Lecythidaceae, and it is also the name of the tree's commercially harvested edible seeds. It is one of the largest and longest-lived trees in the Amazon rainforest ...

s; as well as fish, birds, reptiles, shellfish, and amphibians. 30,000 lithic specimens have been excavated from the cave.

Paintings

Lumps of raw

pigment A pigment is a colored material that is completely or nearly insoluble in water. In contrast, dyes are typically soluble, at least at some stage in their use. Generally dyes are often organic compounds whereas pigments are often inorganic compou ...

and drops of paint from the

cave painting In archaeology, Cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric origin, and the oldest known are more than 40,000 ye ...

s have been dated. The paintings are considered to be the earliest ones in South America and the earliest known cave paintings in the Americas as a whole. Images include a stick figure of a woman giving birth,

geometric design Geometrical design (GD) is a branch of computational geometry. It deals with the construction and representation of free-form curves, surfaces, or volumes and is closely related to geometric modeling. Core problems are curve and surface modelling ...

s, and

hand stencils In archaeology, Cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric origin, and the oldest known are more than 40,000 y ...

in browns, reds, and yellows.

Notes

External links