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The 'Unknown Amazon' exhibition at the British Museum highlights the rich cultural history of the Amazonian rainforest, challenging the perception of it as an untouched ecosystem. It showcases archaeological findings that reveal complex societies and diverse linguistic traditions, indicating human occupation for at least 14,000 years. The exhibition emphasizes the importance of understanding the past for future sustainable management of the Amazon Basin.

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9 views

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The 'Unknown Amazon' exhibition at the British Museum highlights the rich cultural history of the Amazonian rainforest, challenging the perception of it as an untouched ecosystem. It showcases archaeological findings that reveal complex societies and diverse linguistic traditions, indicating human occupation for at least 14,000 years. The exhibition emphasizes the importance of understanding the past for future sustainable management of the Amazon Basin.

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THE AMAZONIAN RAINFOREST is one of the most significant and largely intact

ecosystems left on earth. It is often characterised as an essentially untouched


natural environment in which man's presence is merely incidental. However, the
vast reaches of the rainforest have been lived in and shaped by human hands for
thousands of years. A new exhibition `Unknown Amazon' at the British Museum
brings to life the cultures of the tropical forest both past and present, and invites
comparison with the rise of civilization along major fiver systems elsewhere in
the world.

The Amazon Basin boasts the largest river system on Earth and harbours an
ecosystem of unrivalled complexity. Early European travellers were awed by their
first encounters. In 1531, Francisco Pizarro overthrew the Inca emperor
Atahualpa, and a decade later his younger brother Gonzalo ventured east from
Quito in the Andean highlands in pursuit of the legendary cities of gold and
cinnamon thought to be hidden in the jungle fastness. Forging downriver along
the Rio Napo, the expedition soon exhausted its supplies and, at Pizarro's behest,
his second-in-command Francisco de Orellana led a group sent ahead to
reconnoitre for food. Eight months later Orellana emerged at the mouth of the
Amazon, having made what would prove to be the first descent of the length of
the river.

Friar Gaspar de Carvajal, who accompanied him, wrote a memorable account of


their adventures, including mention of the great signal drums that sounded from
village to village far in advance of their arrival, warning of the incursion by
bearded and helmeted strangers.

Caravajal recounts seeing a multitude of settlements along the river -- on one


day they passed more than twenty villages in succession, and some of these are
said to have stretched for six miles or more.

Such reports have intrigued anthropologists ever since, for they describe dense
populations and sizeable confederations which, if substantiated, would be
entirely at odds with modern stereotypes of hidden, thinly scattered tribes eking
out a precarious existence.

From the late seventeenth-century a succession of naturalists and explorers


recorded and collected many of the everyday objects fashioned from wood and
other organic materials that rarely survive the vicissitudes of climate in the
tropical lowlands. Among the first to assemble a collection was the Portuguese
scholar Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira who, between 1783 and 1792, penetrated
northern tributaries of the Amazon. Then, from 1820 to 1834, the Austrian
naturalist Johann Natterer amassed an amazing collection of natural history
specimens and cultural objects, including a full set of brilliant Munduruku
featherwork and trophy heads from the lower Tapajos, now in the Museum fur
Volkerkunde in Vienna. Such collections housed in European museums preserve a
`window' into cultures that were soon to experience irreversible changes brought
about by extraneous diseases and merciless exploitation.

Population collapse and displacement along the principal watercourses has


contributed to a distorted impression of the cultural achievements of tropical
forest societies. The nomadic bands hunting and foraging deep in the forest
interior eventually came to be seen as a kind of `archetypal' tropical forest
adaptation. So much so that when archaeological excavations began in earnest
at the mouth of the Amazon in the 1950s, the North American investigators
argued that the sophisticated archaeological styles they were discovering on
Marajo Island could not have originated in the Amazon Basin itself, but must
have been derived from more advanced cultures in the Andean highlands. They
proposed the tropical forest to be a `counterfeit paradise' incapable of
supporting much beyond a simple hunting-and-gathering way of life. This
misnomer has exerted a pervasive influence ever since.

Two factors have been instrumental in overturning this paradigm. First is a


surprisingly diverse range of pottery styles, not only within the Marajoara
Tradition (AD 500-1500) on Marajo Island at the mouth of the Amazon, but also
many hundreds of miles upriver at Santarem, and in the middle Amazon near
Manaus. Excavations in the furthest reaches of the Upper Amazon in Peru and
Ecuador have demonstrated the existence of a widespread style of painting large
urns in bold black, red and cream designs that has come to be known as the
Polychrome Tradition. Together with recent research at the mouth of the Amazon,
this seems to confirm that a creative explosion of styles occurred about 2,000
years ago.

The Amazon Polychrome Tradition appears to have its origins on Marajo Island,
where the Amazon meets the Atlantic, and later spread across much of the Upper
Amazon and the coast of Brazil and the Guianas. Even if all the reasons for this
surge in cultural complexity are still not well understood, we do know that
important changes took place then in the social and political organisation of
native Amazonian societies. The style transcends local and regional cultures and
points to the exchange of ideas and technology along the vast riverine network.

Secondly, there is a truly impressive linguistic diversity, with several hundred


distinct languages and dialects. This complexity must have evolved over
thousands of years and implies an occupation of the Amazon basin for at least
14,000 years, a figure supported by archaeological evidence. The rock art in the
Amazon Basin may be as old as human occupation itself. Images are engraved
and painted on exposed bedrock near rapids and waterfalls where fishing is most
productive, and in caves and rock shelters close to archaeological sites.

The origins of early pottery in the lower Amazon are now placed at around
78,000 years ago -- easily the earliest date for pottery anywhere in the Americas.

Recent archaeological research has focused on a phenomenon barely noticed


before: extensive patches of rich black soils found along the banks and bluffs of
all major rivers in the Amazon. Some cover an area of many acres and are up to
6ft deep. They are thought to have formed over many centuries as the
accumulated byproduct of organic remains left by native settlements.

These soils are usually laden with ancient pottery and are now being studied for
clues to the rise of tropical forest civilization in the Amazon Basin. Local farmers
regard the black soils as a `gift from the past' because of their natural fertility
and ability to support a wide range of crops.

Among the most exciting discoveries are funerary urns dating to AD 1400-1700
in caves and rock shelters along the Maraca River near the mouth of the
Amazon. The bones -- men, women and children -were preserved in individually
dedicated vessels. It seems that the sites were visited regularly over the years
and new urns added. The community of ancestors reflects the kinship ties and
lineages of ancient Maraca settlements and their nurtuting of links between the
living and the dead.

Amazonian indigenous groups can no longer be seen as isolated communities in


the depths of the forest or dispersed along rivers. We still have much to learn
about their internal dynamics and social formations, but the rainforest should no
longer be seen as an untouched `paradise'.

The future of the Amazon Basin is now hotly debated. Knowledge about the past
has a vital role to play in planning and decision-making for the future.
Archaeology points to successful, sustainable adaptations grounded in practical
expertise and born of a familiarity with the limitations and possibilities of this
environment. Its wise management is becoming a matter of global concern.

`Unknown Amazon: Culture in Nature in Ancient Brazil' is in the new Great Court
Hotung Temporary Exhibition gallery at the British Museum from 26th October
until 1st April 2002.

It is accompanied by a book, edited by Colin McEwan, Cristiana Barreto and


Eduardo Neves, BMP 19.99 £

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