23 August
On the Amazon

The Painted Cliffs

On Sunday August 19, a few members of the team left Santarem by fast boat to visit the 'piedras pinturas' or painted stones of Monte Alegre. We were the guests of Hugh Beveridge whose company BS&B sponsored our life jackets. Hugh is in the oil business in Brazil.

We had heard that an astonishing collection of petroglyphs adorns the walls of cliffs north of the River Amazon. These petroglyphs are believed to be over 11,000 years old. As the boat approached Monte Alegre the sight of low hills, row upon row of them, was a pleasant surprise for us, as we had been in the unrelieved flatness of the basins of the Beni, Madeira and Amazon for three months.

The party climbed into the hills in the back of a small lorry, and soon were among sandstone outcrops. A stiff 200 metre climb in midday heat brought us to a colourful array of symbols and drawings: men, fish, suns - in red and yellow, covering a smooth wall the size of half a tennis court at the foot of a high cliff.

Later we inspected a cave, known in the Tupi language as Ita Tura Oka or God's House stone. It was high up under a sheer cliff, but its floor had once been the bed of the sea.

These caves and cliff paintings have been studied for many years by Anna Roosevelt granddaughter of US ex-president Theodore Roosevelt. She believes, somewhat controversially, that their remains reveal an organised civilisation of hunters and gatherers. These ancient people are believed to have lived in this group of hills before the arrival of migrants from Asia, who crossed the ice bridge over the Bering Straits about 11,000 BC. Carbon dating of their food remains and pottery indicated settled communities with some type of hierarchical structure.