Summary
Highlights
The stone tools and paintings uncovered reveal that these first Americans were not solely mammoth hunters. They were diverse groups of foragers, fishermen, and artists, demonstrating a complex culture that included scientific observations. This new understanding broadens the perspective on who the earliest inhabitants of the Americas were and the varied ways in which they lived.
Archaeologists Anna Roosevelt and Chris Davis are on a quest to find the earliest evidence of human presence in the Americas. Their journey leads them to the Caverna da Pedra Pintada, or 'Cave of the Painted Rock,' situated on a mountaintop in the Amazon rainforest of western Brazil. The cave's interior is adorned with ancient paintings covering its walls from base to ceiling.
The cave paintings are rich with depictions of animals and celestial bodies, often in abstract forms. One prominent motif is a turtle with a round object in its center, which locals speculate could represent the sun or moon. Roosevelt suggests this aligns with turtle myths often linked to the sun and creation spirits, highlighting the interpretive depth of the ancient art.
For decades, the prevailing theory for the peopling of the Americas held that big game hunters crossed a frozen land bridge from Asia into Alaska (Beringia) around 11,000 B.C. After the ice melted, they were believed to have migrated southward, hunting megafauna with advanced stone spear points. This theory suggested that humans reached the Amazon much later, about a thousand years ago.
Anna Roosevelt's excavations at the Caverna da Pedra Pintada have dramatically altered this historical narrative. Evidence found and dated in the cave indicates that people were living deep in the Amazon forest as early as 13,000 years ago. This discovery places some of the earliest art in the world, and definitively the earliest in the Western Hemisphere, thousands of years before the rise of ancient civilizations like the Romans or Egyptians.