An archaeological site near Manaus, Brazil, reveals that there was a pre-Columbian chiefdom with tens of thousands of Indians, and that their livelihood was fishing
PETER MOON (translated by the author from the original in Portuguese)
The most ordinary image that one has of the Amazonian prehistoric tribes is that their way of life was based on hunting and gathering food, as in central Amazonia there would be no resources to support large settlements.
This image was built over centuries of colonization of the Amazon banks, where it was never found any traces of the immense indigenous villages described in the 16th century by Fray Gaspar de Carvajal.
As lack of evidence never meant evidence of absence, archaeological research conducted in the last decade have detected the remains of the huge settlement described by Carvajal. It lacked know how it was that thousands of Indians found support on site. No longer.
A new archaeological study has just shown that, over a thousand years ago, central Amazonian Indians would be the sporadic hunters. To feed thousands of people, they mainly depended on fishing, as with the current riverine populations do. The consumption of turtles was also an important source of animal protein.
The work was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. Excavations were made in the archaeological site Hatahara, which has been studied for more than a decade by archaeologist Eduardo Goes Neves, professor of the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo (USP).
Hatahara is on the left bank of the Solimões River in Iranduba (AM), about 20 kilometers from the meeting of the waters of the Negro and Solimões rivers, one of the regions with the greatest biodiversity on the planet. The site was continuously occupied for over a thousand years, between the years 300 and 1500.
The study was focused on the phase called Seawall (between the years 750 and 1230), which takes its name because of the ceramic characteristics used by the Indians in the period. At this stage, Hatahara was a huge chiefdom. Occupied at least 20 hectares and stretching for several kilometers on the river bank. It gathered dozens of villages where lived thousands of Indians. How they managed to feed so many people is the question the team of archaeologists wanted to answer.
During the excavation, they collected traces of corn, yam and cassava species that may have been grown in Hatahara, as well as various species of palm trees. The surprise came when they studied nearly 10,000 remains of vertebrates such as mammalian bone fragments and reptiles, and fish bones and skeletons.
"There is much talk in the hunt in the Amazon as a preferred mode of subsistence of the Indians. When we started digging, we expected to find many mammalian remains," says zooarcheologist Gabriela Prestes-Carneiro, first author of the article and responsible for the work of analysis and cataloging of the animal remains found in Hatahara.
"To our great surprise, over 90% were fish," said Gabriela, a researcher at the Federal University of Western Pará (UFOPA) in Santarém. Then came the turtle remains, mainly tartaruga-da-amazônia or Arrau River turtle (Podocnemis expansa). "Mammalian remains have not passed the 3%." Among these there were mostly small marsupials like opossums and rodents such as capybaras, Paraguayan punaré (Thrichomys pachyurus) and the agouti. There were also reptile remains (alligator, lizards and snakes) and birds.
The fish menu consumed in Hatahara was very varied: no less than 37 taxa belonging to 16 of the 28 families of fish that inhabit the rivers. The favorite species were arapaima and his cousin, the arowana. Not coincidentally, the arapaima is the largest species of freshwater fish in the world, reaching 3 meters and weighing 200 kg. By its proportions, the arapaima was a preferred source of animal protein for the Indians.
The second most widely consumed group were catfish, pintado (Pimelodus maculatus), the acari, bodó and tamoatá (Hoplosternum littorale). Then came the family of piranhas, especially pacu (Piaractus brachypomus), tambaqui (Colossoma macropomum), trahira or wolf fish (Hoplias malabaricus) and Hydrolycus. Finally, among the main species caught were the tucunaré (Cichla spp.), eels and stingrays, and many others.
"In addition to the commercial species in central Amazonia, we did also find species that are currently little consumed by the local population, as Muçum (an eel) and different types of bacú, cuiu-cuiú and reco-reco," says Gabriela. The consumption of turtles also occupied an important place in the Indian diet.
The diversity of the fish consumed by prehistoric Indians shows that they had great knowledge of the habits of those species, as well as the domain of sophisticated fishing techniques.
"The fish had a very great importance throughout the year in the subsistence of the population of Hatahara" says Gabriela. "Several species have seasonal habits and are only fished at certain times of the year and in specific places. The Indians knew when fish them and knew where to find them: in streams, lakes, in the flooded forest and the riverbeds "
According to Neves, "the findings are important because, for the first time, we will publish a systematic study of faunal remains in an Amazon site. The study complements previous studies that show that people who occupied the site had a diverse diet, based on the management of aquatic resources and domesticated plants. This shows that in the riverine areas of the Amazon it was possible that relatively large populations had successful occupations without dependence on agriculture," said Neves, who coordinated the whole archeological project.
The identification of fish remains collected in Hatahara was conducted by Gabriela at the Natural History Museum in Paris, which has one of the best and most diverse collections of Amazonian fish. She plans to create a similar research collection in UFOPA. Therefore, it is holding collections in the central Amazon, Tapajós River, the Guaporé River in Rondonia, and also in Bolivia.
The historic account of Fray Gaspar de Carvajal
This research proves Hatahara the writings of Fray Gaspar de Carvajal, who in 1542 sailed the region in the expedition led by the Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana.
Down the Solimões from Peru, immediately before reaching the confluence with the Negro river, Carvajal described in his Descobrimento do rio de Orellana: “El lunes de Pascua de Espíritu Santo por la mañana pasamos a vista y junto a un pueblo muy grande y muy vicioso, y tenía muchos barrios, y en cada barrio un desembarcadero al río, y en cada desembarcadero había muy gran copia de indios, y este pueblo duraba más de dos leguas y media”. (“On Easter Monday, during the morning, we had sailed in front of a very large village, with many districts, and in each district there is a pier on the river, and in each pier there were a great number of Indians. The village had two leagues and a half long. "
The former European league was 6.6 km, then Carvajal described a village that occupied 16 km of the river banks. With the arrival of Europeans and their epidemics, all those villages were wiped out, erased from view and covered by forest. Therefore, its existence has been questioned ever since.
The systematic study of the archaeological site of Hatahara not only proved the existence of the huge village described by Carvajal. The research has also solved a 500 year old mystery. What was the secret behind the livelihood of thousands of Indians? Fish.
Gabriela Prestes-Carneiro et al. 2015. Subsistence fishery at Hatahara (750–1230 CE), a pre-Columbian central Amazonian village. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, in press
(www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X15301632)
Originally published at Agência Fapesp
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