Archaic South America

Archaic Amazonia

	1. Painting on rock from Caverna da Pedra Pintada, Brazil, 11 Kyr B.P. This work from the Amazon River basin in northern Brazil suggests that there other waves of Paleoindian immigration from Siberia besides the Clovis people of the Andes and North America. It also shows that people could live by hunting small game and fish and by foraging fruits and seeds in a humid tropical environment
	2. A tsanta (shrunken head). The reputation of the Amazonian peoples for being warlike seems in part an effect of ideologically motivated exaggeration by westerners and of western economic and political impact. In the 20th c., the Jivaro people of the Andean foothills had the fiercest reputation, based on their production of shrunken heads. While the practice was traditional, it was very limited until their contact with the European market for exotic novelties to justify colonial ideology and the availabilty of guns to make possible slaughter for mass production to satisfy the European market. This slaughter ended when the population became greatly reduced.
	3. Yanomamö warriors prepare to raid another village. The 15,000-member tribe lives in some 200 villages in Brazil and Venezuela. Whether these people are naturally inclined to feud or if their wars are the effect of external factors is an ideological debate that resists resolution by appeal to evidence, for the evidence supports opposite conclusions. Actually, the debate is an artifact of the contradictions in capitalist ideology and it is therefore unrealistic to expect it will be settled.