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Itacoatiaras and Preguiças
On the way to Campina Grande last Sunday, we stopped at an archaeological site in Paraíba state near the town of Ingá. At the end of a small road on the open hillsides is a small natural history museum and a rocky area near a stream with carvings on a vertical rock face about 8 feet high and 30 feet long. 
These inscriptions, the Itacoatiaras (an indigenous word), are complex and non-representational, and apparently have not been interpreted. (You can see them if you click on the picture to enlarge it.) The site has been part of the Brazilian Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional since 1944. According to BrazilViagem.com, they are considered one of the most important set of pre-historic inscriptions in the world. The Paraíba Portal has some photos and information (in Portuguese), and I gather that they are thought to be by indigenous peoples but haven't been dated, and I don't know when archaeologists found out about them.
In the museum, which seems to be a converted farmhouse, are some fossilized bones, many quite large, but no complete skeletons. The exhibits are hand labeled and set on low benches with no protection from humidity or admirers. Several are labeled as from the Preguiça Gigante. Angela said preguiça means "lazy one," and that it referred a large animal that was very slow and lazy. At first, I took that as an informal description, but then I realized that it names the prehistoric giant sloth. Apparently there are quite a few fossil beds in northeast Brazil but it wasn't clear to me whether these fossils were discovered at the site of the inscriptions, or nearby, or somewhere else altogether.
These inscriptions, the Itacoatiaras (an indigenous word), are complex and non-representational, and apparently have not been interpreted. (You can see them if you click on the picture to enlarge it.) The site has been part of the Brazilian Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional since 1944. According to BrazilViagem.com, they are considered one of the most important set of pre-historic inscriptions in the world. The Paraíba Portal has some photos and information (in Portuguese), and I gather that they are thought to be by indigenous peoples but haven't been dated, and I don't know when archaeologists found out about them.
In the museum, which seems to be a converted farmhouse, are some fossilized bones, many quite large, but no complete skeletons. The exhibits are hand labeled and set on low benches with no protection from humidity or admirers. Several are labeled as from the Preguiça Gigante. Angela said preguiça means "lazy one," and that it referred a large animal that was very slow and lazy. At first, I took that as an informal description, but then I realized that it names the prehistoric giant sloth. Apparently there are quite a few fossil beds in northeast Brazil but it wasn't clear to me whether these fossils were discovered at the site of the inscriptions, or nearby, or somewhere else altogether.
3 comments:
The name of Preguiça in English is Sloth.
I read somewhere (the NY Times maybe?) about legends of a giant sloth-like creature that still lurks in South American jungles, gobbling up the occasional visiting professor. Watch out for the Preguica.
Hi Carolyn.
You can find images of the Giant Sloth on maps contained in the fascinating book called <1421: The Year the Chinese Discovered the World>. The Chinese pre-dated the Eurpeans by more than 1/2 a century in the Americas. And these bones, together with the drawings made by chinese explorers (and then transferred to Portuguese maps), indicate that the creature really existed. They were NOT the equivalent of those sea-monsters in the oceans of 16th century mapmakers.
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