Amazonian Animism: Natural World Annotations in Paleoindian Cave Art

Abstract

Cultures that first settled the Lower Amazon basin in Brazil entered rainforests and caves that were already inhabited, long ago, by owls, bats, frogs, and numerous other animals. The animal activities left natural patterns that informed early cultures about viable locations, navigable paths, and ample resources. Rock Art painted in the Monte Alegre hills of Pará, Brazil, on the banks of the lower Amazon River appears to have annotated some of these locations and natural patterns, not always as direct representational art, but sometimes as animistic and mnemonic symbolism. This chapter presents three ways in which the natural world was revered in animistic rock art at Monte Alegre. The first is through inspirations or decisions for where, in the landscape, to paint in red and yellow hues, which may have been triggered by areas where naturally-occurring red and yellow lichen circles grew on trees and rocks. The second is through “patron” animals drawn, and often personified, at the entrance of caves where the natural animal proliferates. The third is through ritual magic of animal drawings “touched” by painted handprints. Amazonian animism is based on a legacy of honoring nature’s patterned relationships.

1. Introduction

An insufferably hot, noxious cave in the middle of the Amazon rainforest is not what paleoindian pioneers in the hills of Monte Alegre, along the lower Amazon River, expected to find over 13,000 years ago. What they did find was a cave distinct from all others nearby, a cave permeated with animism so potent that it is deadly to humans. Yet, in trying to fathom the cave’s manifestation, paleoindian artists annotated it with a type of personhood, likening it to a burrow, and the cave’s unusual warmth to that of the sun. This article focuses on the rock art depiction of a red and yellow tortoise (a cold-blooded animal that burrows to regulate its temperature) deeper inside the cave, which symbolizes a non-human social relationship of the setting sun to death and the underworld.

Earliest human occupation in the region dates to approximately 13,200 years ago [1]. Many of the surrounding caves in Monte Alegre are inhabitable today, and even during the terminal Pleistocene when people first arrived there, some of the caves were probably hospitable prima-facie. A few other caves no doubt needed to be cleared of their denizens first: snakes, spiders, bats, owls, capybaras, or even jaguars. But one cave in the region is uniquely inhospitable and bizarre to all others.

Caverna do Diabo is unusually hot, with pungent ammonia gas lingering in the air above a ground writhing with roaches. All outward appearances should have repulsed humans away from this cave. Both hospitable and animal-infested caves and rock shelters surround it in all directions; there is no shortage of “better” cave options within walking distance. And yet, paleoindian artists (though possibly singular) ventured daringly inside—long enough, at least, to draw several cryptic designs and symbols on its interior walls.

Some of the red ochre pictographs clearly depict awkward, disembodied facial expressions. Others resemble animals, and one is a geometric pattern. Some drawings are abstract or undecipherable. Most of the pictographs are near the entrance. However, one panel of rock art is much deeper in the cave, and it contains a few closely-spaced images that compose a scene.

The artists certainly planned their works, since the ochre was applied wet, not scrawled from any in-situ ochre obtainable nearby. The artists also risked their health, and possibly their lives, in order to draw the image so far inside the cave; why? Such an inhospitable cave holds no apparent practical or material gains. The cave entrance lacks human artifacts, offerings, or even potentially commemorative visitation handprints, which are so common to many of the other rock art sites in Monte Alegre. Nor does a person’s entrance into the noxious cave induce them with altered states of consciousness (none that I nor my companions with me experienced), which might otherwise have been considered worth the risk of life in order to divine knowledge, power, or healing. No contextual artifacts, features, or clearings suggest this cave, nor its immediate outside vicinity, was frequented or revered. Additionally, the themed elements of the art neither imply practical use (no ritual hunting scenes) nor transcendent imagery (no psychedelic, hallucinogenic, entoptic, therianthropic, nor other supernatural effigies), only warning.

Theorizing why the tortoise “scene” is deeper in the cave, and theorizing why the artists went through the effort to draw it in the first place, is the focus of this chapter. Geological data indicate the cave held its properties long before humans entered the continent, so there is high confidence that the rock art reflects the artists’ commentary on the cave’s characteristics sans direct human participation or agency. In other words, this cave was regarded as “animated”—self-perpetuated with logical purpose.

Not only does the existence of the rock art demonstrate that Amazonian paleoindians were strongly motivated by a belief system not anchored to purely human interests and economic or subsistence practicalities, but also the pictographic composition is evidence for their strong urge to annotate the land in order to substantiate their epistemological understanding of the world. One that acknowledged cohabitation with disembodied but self-motivated forces.

2. Geology and geography

Caverna do Diabo is located on Serra da Maxirá hill (Figure 1-left), one of many elongated low-relief hills arranged in a ring that delineate the Monte Alegre geologic dome, in the Brazilian state of Pará. The dome formed millions of years ago from a long-dormant hotspot. Additionally, a tectonic northeast-southwest fault, called the Ereré Fault, intrudes the bedrock of the Monte Alegre hill ridge [2, 3] through a graben-like landmass shift over 2 million years ago. The Ereré Fault lies beneath Serra da Maxirá, alongside Serra do Erere, and it produces a sulfurous thermal spring at the ground surface several kilometers to the northeast.

Figure 1.

Serra da Maxirá hill (left photo). Burraco quente (right) showing the chemically leached black and white boulders on the surface of the hill above Caverna do Diabo. This area feels warmer than its surroundings, there is a faint malodorous smell, and no vegetation grows here due to the forces emanating from the cave beneath.

Evidence of ancient wildfires in sediment layers from the Tertiary period, and earlier layers, were determined by several geologists to be provoked by tectonic factors, like volcanism, electricity discharges, spontaneous combustion, and friction between rocks [2]. The Tertiary period ended over 2.5 million years ago, so any residual geothermal activity would have been much more subtle to humans first entering the hills over 13,000 years ago. These residual conditions being self-perpetual, however, may have fueled animistic rationale of the landscape by early humans.

Maxirá hill is round at the base and it reaches an altitude of only about 150 meters [2]. There are not many tall trees that obscure visibility or sunlight, and vegetation is not overly dense. The cave entrance is relatively easy to reach, and it is the only known cave in this hill. The serene ambience around Maxirá hill, however, belies the lethality of its cave.

The cave’s name, Caverna do Diabo, means ‘cave of the devil’ (or demon) in Portuguese. It is aptly named for its insufferable conditions produced from suspected geothermal activity that keeps the cave well over 100°F (~38°C) even at its entrance. The cave also continuously emits ammonia gas, probably due to the same geothermal activity interacting with biological decay. The conditions inside the cave have been continuously sustained for a long enough period of time that rocks on the ground above it have been chemically altered (Figure 1-right). Despite the dangerous conditions, however, the entryway was painted with red pictographs.

We can only speculate what the first people at Monte Alegre thought about this cave from the rock art they produced. The fact that there is rock art is itself an indication that they too found this cave to be noteworthy, because they apparently took significant risk to paint inside it. The smell of ammonia is evident from several meters outside the entrance, and the increasing temperature is felt at the entrance. Covering the mouth and nose with cloth only offers temporary relief because as sweat and moisture accumulate, the gas condenses into liquid ammonia and its stinging smell burns the eyes, nose, and throat. The longer anyone remains inside, the greater the risk of liquid ammonia condensing into the lungs, and presumably the same would be true of the eyes. However, roaches and hornets endure the boundary zone at the entrance, and bats might be nesting inside.

3. Rock art and cave contexts

The rock art here is not plentiful, but they retain a wet or fresh appearance. The most visible and prominent pictographs were drawn on a jutting outcrop from the wall (Figure 2), which is about 1 meter high (~4 feet tall), just inside the entrance. All the drawings are visibly red, but Dstretch photo enhancement reveals yellow pigment too, mostly in the background, as though the surface was primed in yellow paint followed up by drawing the red pictographic image. Priming the background is a suspected practice at other rock art sites in the hill ridge too [4]. This artistic trend again enforces the inference that the rock art was prepared and executed with premeditated intent.

Figure 2.

Caverna do Diabo rock art. Unaltered photo of the entryway outcrop with the most prominent pictographs (top photo). The diagonal left side of the outcrop with geometric designs (bottom left photo enhanced with Dstretch lds to highlight red and yellow colors). The lower portion of the front outcrop showing two heads possibly of an owl and a bat (bottom center photo-Dstretch lds). The upper portion of the main outcrop depicting the 4-limbed creature with three torso dots (bottom right photo-Dstretch lds).

The largest and most prominently placed drawing at the entryway of Caverna do Diabo is what appears to be a four-legged creature with a tail and a half oval torso that contains three dots in a curved pattern. The head of the creature is unidentifiable, but connected to one of its forelimbs is a circle with a dot in the center. Another encircled dot is also drawn near, but separate from, the creatures’ hindlimbs. It is uncertain whether this creature is terrestrial or avian, insect or animal, nor can any of those possibilities be entirely ruled out. The three torso markings, however, were probably considered an identifiable detail by the artists and their community in the past.

Beneath the four-limbed creature are two disembodied non-human heads. The higher head is circular, with small circles forming the eyes, and a Y-shape above and between the eyes, which terminates on top of a single horizontal mouth line. Compared to other pictographic human and bird faces in these hills, this fits closer to an avian face—possibly an owl or hawk. The lowest pictographic head has a cleft forehead within a horizontally ovoid shape containing two small circles for eyes, and a narrow horizontally ovoid mouth. This head appears to represent a bat, although identification of both heads are not certain or indisputable.

Painted onto the surface of a diagonal outcrop just left of the previous one are some complex geometric lines in red pigment, and yellow pigment again appears to be in the background. What is discernible is an “X” shape to the left of a relatively square shape that encloses a diagonal slash (\). Other crisscrossed curvilinear lines appear above and to the left of the discernible ones. Square pictographs enclosing slashes and X shapes do also appear at two sites in Monte Alegre as well, most notably at Painel do Pilão in a large grid-like pattern of potential sky-related tally marks suggestive of a calendar.

The lower portion of the diagonal outcrop appears to have been broken off, although no fragments were visible on the ground underneath it. The broken portion of the outcrop also appears to have resulted in the removal of parts of the pictographs, which at least suggests the paintings predate detachment of the lower wall.

Just a bit further inside the cave, on the main back wall of the corridor entryway, is a red pictograph image that is only rendered discernible with Dstretch photo enhancements (Figure 3). Depicted near the top of the photo is an expressive face (without an enclosing head design). One eye is encircled while the other appears to be a mere dot. Above the encircled eye is a long arch that appears to be an eyebrow; the dot eye has a short, but also probably faded, eyebrow. There is a short vertical line between the eyes, representing a nose. Beneath the eyes and nose are longer horizontal mouth lines that are hard to ascertain, but appear to bear a snear or grimace. Overall, the image appears to be a human facial expression.

Figure 3.

Lower wall pictographs inside Caverna do Diabo. Unmodified photo of the pictographs (left) and Dstretch yre color enhanced photo to highlight yellow red and white (for increased contrast) colors of the rock art.

Beneath the expressive face is a peculiar “baby” face framed in a horizontally ovoid “head” that has two ovals attached to either side, as though they are ears. The head contains encircled eyes that appear to be looking up and to the left. What makes the face peculiar are two lines sprouting from the center of the head, which form outward-turned hooks. These appear more like antennae than hair. Sprouting from beneath the head is a segmented curved J-shaped polygon that bears a resemblance to a worm or snake (or maggot?) torso. There might be more to the torso, since there are more red lines and marks, but they are too unfamiliar to be discernible.

The “baby” face is potentially looking at another unenclosed face above and to the left, given indication by a single circle “eye” with an upward arched “eyebrow” and a horizontal line “mouth.” Although this face is at the edge of the photo, the rest of the face does not exist. The partial face was drawn on a projected portion of the wall, with the contours of the wall forming a lower jaw line. Not much else can be said about the significance of these drawings because the facial expressions and worm-like shape are unique in comparison to the rock art elsewhere in Monte Alegre.

Maxirá hill is notably the westernmost hill that contains rock art on the Monte Alegre hill ridge. Ethnography from other circum-Caribbean cultures indicate that some tribes refer to the land in the west, or particularly behind mountains, as the land of the dead [5, 6, 7]. Based on this context, the paintings in Caverna do Diabo might have death-themed, or ancestral-spirit significance, especially the “baby face” image, which could symbolize a human soul, or worms/maggots that feast from a corps, or perhaps both simultaneously.

However, the uncanny nature of the pictographs might also possibly reflect a supernatural understanding of the cave. The drawings bear some human resemblance in order to communicate a human warning or reaction. The “forces” at play in this cave are therefore bestowed animated human-like qualities [8] based on knowledge of how they affect humans, not based on how they affect (or appear not to affect) animals in the cave.

4. The Tortoise in the Devil’s Lair

The next image from Caverna do Diabo, which is the focus of this chapter, was only discovered after image enhancements were done on a “blind” photo, having no knowledge that anything was inside the cave (Figure 4). To avoid prolonged exposure to the ammonia gas, the photo was taken blindly from just inside the corridor entryway, with the flash on, and using high film sensitivity (ISO 3200). The photo reveals a large boulder on the ground deeper inside, approximately 7–10 meters in the gallery of the cave. Drawn in red and yellow on the side of the boulder that faces the entryway is the appearance of a turtle/tortoise standing to the left of a plant (bush? tree?), and both are on top of a horizontal line that slants upward at either end (a sled?).

Figure 4.

Tortoise plant and sled pictograph. Photo taken “blind” inside Caverna do Diabo, revealing a red and yellow pictograph painted on a giant slab of rock on the ground. The photo was Dstretch lab enhanced, which enhances contrast and all colors.

Although the boulder looks as though it could have possibly fallen from the wall or ceiling, such an assessment cannot accurately be made from a single photo taken from a distance. The pictograph appears to have been drawn within the space provided by the contours of the boulder, not drawn and then broken off as with the diagonal outcrop containing the geometric drawings.

This turtle/tortoise pictograph is unexpected, especially being found inside a cave. Turtles are cited, albeit rarely, as entering caves in the Paituna hill about 4 km south of Maxirá, which is closer to the Amazon river [2]. Tortoises are less known to inhabit caves, and the rare instances when they were found to do so [9], it was theorized to be a strategy for cooling their bodies down from the hot sun, which contradicts conditions found in this cave.

Turtles/tortoises are also not frequently depicted in the rock art, although one notable example may have been found at the grid pictograph at Painel do Pilão [4]. Despite the rarity of pictographic representation, turtles and tortoises both were very commonly sought and eaten, as has been indicated in archeological contexts spanning from paleoindian to historic-period excavation layers [10, 11, 12]. Culturally, they are very commonly featured in myths, particularly myths about the sun as represented by the Amazonian jabuti tortoise.

So why would there be a turtle/tortoise rock art image in a cave? To seek answers, it would first help to know which type of chelonia it is. Unfortunately, the photo, and perhaps the drawing, is not that detailed. However, the image enhancements do indicate that the shell is somewhat high arching like that of a tortoise, segmented with many small sections, and that the animal image is composed of both red and yellow pigment. The aforementioned jabuti now seems more plausible, though not exclusive.

The plant would be another important clue, but again the image is not detailed enough to determine the type of plant depicted. I had considered that the plant indicates a terrestrial habitat, but the Amazon has equally important aquatic and semi-aquatic plants (like buriti palm trees).

The “sled” could be another important clue because the animal is not “animated” by itself. Instead, like the plant, the tortoise/turtle appears rooted. Motion is implied instead by the sled. If this is indeed the case, the tortoise stands in as a symbol for something else that moves—an inanimate object imagined to be animate. The jabuti now seems arguably the best candidate, and it possibly symbolizes the sun. The next question to address is why the sun would be depicted in a cave?

Charles Hartt [13] further described other jabuti/sun analogy myths told among Tupí communities, like how the tortoise escaped the jaguar by burrowing into one hole and escaping out another. In this tale, Hartt applied the metaphor to the sun descending in the west to rise in the east the next day [13]. This metaphor implies that a red and yellow turtle pictograph, if representative of the sun, might be drawn in a cave as a metaphor for the underworld where the sun entered at night. This cave itself, being warm and powerful, was perhaps imagined as an underworld entrance for the sun to descend below the horizon in the west (relative to the other hills on the ridge). Therefore, the tortoise pictograph, as understood through animism, does not just explain, but also informs the viewer of the phenology of the cave—its power manifesting from the underworld (geothermal or tectonic forces from deep below the surface) as potent as the sun.

Phenology is the study of repeated natural patterns in relation to climate, plants, and animals. Ancient people engaged in a type of phenology as pioneers of new landscapes. Devoid of any human presence, they would have witnessed lands etched with animal paths and geological processes. South American megafauna still alive during the terminal Pleistocene when people first trickled into the Amazon were capable of drastically altering the landscape simply by moving, burrowing, climbing, and accumulating favored plants by their digestive habits. Phenologies offer a strong impetus for animistic beliefs that were meant to understand, or at least make note of landscape patterns pre-existent to human arrival.

5. Discussion

Animism is often assumed to be the foundational belief system of all religions [14]. The term animism means to endow with life-like movement emanating from disembodied spirits, neither benevolent nor malevolent (or both), that inhabit the world in locations like forests, lakes, springs, caves, and so on [15]. However, it is more than a set of beliefs. Animism is an entire perspective that anthropologists ascribe to nearly all hunter-gatherers before the Neolithic age about 10,000 years ago; and it still persists among many cultures today.

Animism as a perspective of relating the environment to the way aspects of it might be connected in a social sense has been termed ‘relational epistemology’ by Nurit Bird-David [16]. He sees animism as an epistemology that makes sense of an unpredictable or threatening world by relating everything in an interlocking relationship. The epistemology is rooted in predictions and explanations for how inanimate objects move, based on knowledge of how animate objects move [8].

Because we as humans move in patterns and make decisions based on motives, we imagine all patterns and movements are done in similar fashion, satisfying a will or purpose. Myths are often told from this paradigm. The problem is that we often cannot imagine a will or purpose beyond a human one. So, although the tortoise-as-sun myth borrows the reptile’s behavior to explain the sun’s behavior, the pictographic scene rests atop a (human) sled to rationalize the sun’s mysterious motion.

The animism possibly associated with Caverna do Diabo is the idea that dangerous places contain powerful forces. The cave contains rock art, whereas numerous other more hospitable caves contain none. This cave could not have been inhabited by people, but it is at least partly inhabited by animals. The creature images on the right side of the entryway outcrop possibly identify animal denizens of the cave (perhaps wasps and roaches in addition to bats and owls?). However, the geometric shapes indicate human notation.

If the outcrop with geometric designs was indeed intentionally detached by humans, the geometric designs further support Bird-David’s [16] aforementioned ‘relational epistemology.’ The cave certainly fits an “unpredictable or threatening environment,” and so the animated landscape here would be rooted in the explanation of what makes this cave (and not others) so dangerous.

Would the ancient artists have surmised that volcanic activity over 2 million years ago left residual geothermal activity? Probably not, but animism renders such ponderings nearly trivial. Instead, the area was perceived as powerful, and therefore should be dealt with cautiously, except in times when powerful items are needed. If detachments were indeed taken from the outcrop, they quite possibly would have been perceived as being more powerful.

Intentional wall removal was discovered at a nearby rock art site, Painel do Pilão. However, the majority of rocks recovered from excavation directly underneath the wall at that site did not have pictographs on its surface. Pursuit of silicified sandstone suitable for knapping is one proposed theory for the Painel do Pilão site, the other proposed theory—particularly unique to the evidence unearthed at Painel do Pilão—was intentional modification of the landscape [4]. In either theory, animism is the implied logic behind wall removals.

Although never having been excavated, Caverna do Diabo lacks most of the associated material and pictographic context found at Painel do Pilão. Perhaps detached wall fragments from the geometric design at Caverna do Diabo were also taken away from the site by humans. If this is true, one could argue that despite the danger of the cave, venturing inside served a practical purpose. However, even if true, the practicality would have been minimal, and animistic beliefs remain the highest probable motivation to do so. Myths retained among other Amazonian cultures support this conclusion, and they often credit one or another phenology as providing culture-sustaining knowledge.

There is a myth, told among the Craho culture, of a hunter who went into the hole of an armadillo and found a bunch of peccaries living there, and therefore this is how hunters know where to find peccaries today [17]. Similarly, there are several versions of another Gê myth told by the Craho, Cayapo, Ramkokamekra, and Apinaye, where a hunter was pursuing an armadillo that fell into a hole that led to a large plain below. Young members of the hunter’s tribe got rope and climbed down the hole (in some versions they climbed down a Buriti palm tree) and this is how people descended from the sky to populate the earth [17].

In both of these myths, the animistic conclusion drawn is that the events of non-human actors are decisive for human destiny. But perhaps this conclusion is somewhat cynical and hasty. Only if myths were simply meant to explain human serendipity (or suffering), then the cynical conclusion would perhaps be correct. However, if myth is meant to convey non-human patterns, and even a bit of history about non-human relationships too, then myths remain perpetually informative about the natural world, which helps us put that knowledge to good use.

In the terminal Pleistocene period, paleoindians pioneering into South America as the first humans might have discovered trails formed from Neochoerus, the 6-foot-long megafauna capybara, or caves widened and smoothed by Megatherium, the ground sloth that could grow up to 3.5 meters long [18]. Even the armadillo-like megafauna, Glyptotherium—with a weight and size comparable to a small car—may have burrowed underground holes readily useable by early human pioneers [18]. Paths which when followed, may have brought paleoindian hunters upon unsuspecting prey. That is, after all, implied by the Craho myth of the armadillo mentioned above.

The Amazon rainforest is teeming with life that no doubt spawned countless phenologies. Here, not just megafauna, but also owls, bats, frogs, and even lichen, lianas, and mangroves formed natural patterns that marked the land long before human arrival. These marks helped inform early cultures about viable locations, navigable paths, and ample resources. Some of these phenologies were perhaps translated through animism presented in rock art, others were presented through myth or both.

6. Summary

The case laid out by the tortoise pictograph in Caverna do Diabo is that Amazonian paleoindians entered a landscape that had already been set in motion by forces and animals, wherein people had to conform to it. Phenologies and non-human personhoods often aided the success of ancestral human pioneers in new lands. Primordial patterns, like that of a noxious hot cave, continuously manifest themselves with or without the presence of humans. Animistic cultures sometimes attempt to explain, but always find ways to annotate, them in myths and rock art that recount non-human relationships through the metaphoric relationships of animals and objects as though they were people with social relationships. Amazonian animism particularly emphasizes a legacy of honoring nature’s patterned relationships. It was constructed from observed natural associations set within recognizable social relationships. The reasons are possibly for ease of memory, and perhaps to aid in recognizing and reinforcing interactions that accompany desired outcomes. The habits of animals and characters in myths may seem imaginative at first glance, unless we consider that the information, they preserve animates relationships within the natural world, sometimes wholly absent of human agents, except perhaps as third-party observers.