The pre-Cabraline history of Brazil is the stage in Brazil's history before the arrival of Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500, at a time when the region that is now Brazilian territory was inhabited by thousands of Indigenous peoples.
Traditional prehistory is generally divided into the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods. However, in Brazil, some authors prefer to work with the geological epochs of the current Quaternary period: Pleistocene and Holocene. In this sense, the most accepted periodization is divided into: Pleistocene (hunters and gatherers at least 12,000 years ago) and Holocene, the latter being subdivided into Early Archaic (between 12,000 and 9,000 years ago), Middle Archaic (between 9,000 and 4,500 years ago) and Recent Archaic (from 4,000 years ago until the arrival of the Europeans). It is believed that the first peoples began to inhabit the region where Brazil is now located 60,000 years ago.
The expression "prehistory of Brazil" is also used to refer to this period, but the term has been criticized since the concept of prehistory is questioned by some scholars as being a Eurocentric worldview, in which people without writing would be people without history. In the context of Brazilian history, this nomenclature would not accept that the Indigenous people had their own history. For this reason, some prefer to call this period pre-Cabraline.
Study methodology The study of Brazilian history before 1500 is mostly done through archaeology, since the peoples who occupied the territory are not known to have writing systems. Linguistic, ethnological, and historical studies have aided archaeological research as much as possible. However, few authors have attempted to reconstruct this history in a panoramic way (and attempts by archaeologists to establish an overview of pre-Cabraline history have not proved satisfactory). A further aggravating factor is that much remains to be done at various levels of research - language records and comparisons, analysis of excavated materials, the relationship between antiquity sites and others from the colonial period.
The first scholar to inquire into Brazil's past was Danish naturalist Peter Wilhelm Lund (1801-1880). Lund lived much of his life in Brazil, and was responsible for studying several reminiscences of ancient plants in the caves of the Lagoa Santa region (Minas Gerais), where he settled between 1834 and 1880. In his researches, he found human bones mixed in with these prehistoric remains, one of the first findings that contradicted Creationism. He was the first to defend the antiquity of American Man based on archaeological finds, but he failed to convince the scientific community of his time.
Midden
Middens, shell mounds, and other debris accumulated by human action were archeological remains responsible for stirring scientific debate in the 19th century. Ladislau Netto, director of the National Museum of Brazil - which together with the Ipiranga Museum, represented the official interest in the archeological-historical facts in the country - sent the first scientific expeditions to these regions. After years of research, these missions claimed that "shell mounds" would have anthropogenic formation, i.e. human origin. Hermann Von Ihering, however, the director of the Ipiranga Museum, first opposed this view, stating that the shell remains would have been formed by natural, intertropical phenomena.
Between 1880 and 1900, the first excavations in the Amazon took place. Extensive discoveries of Marajoara ceramics were made in this period, and were analyzed in 1882 by Egyptologist Paul l'Epine, who believed he identified Egyptian and Asian spellings on the indigenous ceramics. Émil Goeldi also conducted important research in Brazil's northern region at that time. The Austrian J. A. Padberg-Drenkpohl, hired after World War I by the National Museum, was another important figure in the history of Brazilian archaeology, who excavated at Lagoa Santa between 1926 and 1929. His goal was to find traces that would prove Lund's classic findings. Drenpohl, however, was not successful in his enterprise, and he went on to criticize the defenders of the antiquity of humans from Lagoa Santa. In 1934, shortly after Drenkpohl's last expedition, Angione Costa published the first manual of Brazilian archaeology.
After 1950, official archaeology diminished, while the number of amateurs who began to carry out research in the country increased. One of these was Guilherme Tiburtius, a German immigrant in Curitiba, who conducted one of the most important searches for Indian antiquities in Brazil, collecting artifacts for his collection (received by Joinville's Sambaqui Museum). He studied the coast of Santa Catarina and the plateau of Paraná and was assisted in his research by the Federal University of Paraná. Harold V. Walter, the English Consul in Belo Horizonte, was responsible for research in the state of Minas Gerais, in the region of Lagoa Santa. Although he used a methodology that is not accepted nowadays, he contributed to the collection of information about the Pleistocene era. Even at this time, substantial efforts were made to preserve Brazil's historical heritage. Thanks to the efforts of several intellectuals, the Prehistory Institute of USP (currently integrated into MAE) was created, while a few years later (1961), new legislation on heritage was enacted. Accompanying this advance in the question of preservation of Brazilian memory, excavations were carried out at the mouth of the Amazon river by Clifford Evans and Betty J. Meggers between 1949 and 1950, discovering important ceramic artifacts, and in São Paulo and Paraná between 1954 and 1956 by Joseph Emperaire and Annette Laming - where the first Carbon-14 datings were made.
The recent history of archaeology in Brazil includes the creation of PRONAPA (National Project for Archaeological Research) with the assistance of IPHAN, which aims to conduct searches to provide a more complete picture of the Brazilian historical-cultural past. Meanwhile, institutions such as the National Museum, the Ipiranga Museum, and the Prehistory Institute conducted isolated research, and the Émil Goeldi Museum launched a project called PRONAPABA (National Project of Archaeological Research in the Amazon Basin). Several studies have been conducted since then on middens, Brazilian rock painting, and lithic industry. In 1980, the first Brazilian Archaeological Society was created. Archaeology is now taught in Brazil, although in a limited way.
Pleistocene (60,000 - 12,000 BP)
Territorial occupation
The occupation of American territory is a topic that has generated substantial controversy, especially as many archaeologists are still reluctant to accept that humans could have arrived in the Americas by other routes than the Bering land bridge. However, discoveries made in Brazilian archaeological sites have called into question the validity of this theory. In Piauí, for example, a fossil of the roundworm Ancylostoma duodenale was found with a date of 7,750 BP. According to some archaeologists, this Old World species could not have survived the Beringian crossing, because it would have died from the cold. Thus, they believe that the existence of the fossil indicates the migration of people from warm regions of the globe. Finds in Minas Gerais and Bahia have been dated between 25,000 and 12,000 BP At the Alice Boer archaeological site in São Paulo, pieces dating back to 14,200 BP have been found. In São Raimundo Nonato, in Piauí, archaeologists advocate an age of 50,000 years for a shelter occupied by prehistoric man. Also at this same site, archaeologists were able to find human artifacts dating back to more than 48,000 BP
The discoveries in Brazil led to polemics about the traditional view of the occupation of the Americas and archeologists started to defend other theories about the great migrations, among them, that humans arrived in the Americas between 150,000 and 100,000 years ago, arriving by Malay-Polynesian (from Southeast Asia) or Australian (from the South Pacific) currents, while other authors still think of a migration current originating in Africa. The similarities between the material traces found in the Americas and those found in Oceania contribute to these theories. Some believe that Brazil was occupied 60,000 years ago, based on discoveries in Piauí. Migratory currents would have reached Minas Gerais 30,000 years ago and Rio Grande do Sul 15,000 years ago.
Luzia Woman
Luzia is the name of the oldest human fossil found in the Americas. Charcoal near the fossilized remains was dated to about 11,000 years before present. Found by French archaeologist Annette Laming-Emperaire in the 1970s at the archaeological site of Lapa Vermelha, in the municipality of Lagoa Santa (Minas Gerais), the fossil of this prehistoric woman contributes to reigniting an old debate about the origins of humans in the Americas. According to paleoanthropologist Walter Neves, responsible for naming the fossil, the morphology of Luzia's skull would bring her closer to the current aborigins of Australia and natives of Africa.
Neves ventured the hypothesis that the occupation of the Americas was older than previously imagined, although not going back very far in time (about 14,000 years before the present), and that it was carried out by peoples from distinct regions, such as Oceania and Africa. This thesis was not well received by some scientists.
The people of Luzia Studies conducted in the region inhabited by Luzia and other Paleo-Indians show that they were unaware of pottery and that their lithic industry was relatively simple. Recent research, however, claims that these humans were sedentary. Findings such as numerous burials and the use of raw materials existing only at this site have reinforced these ideas. An analysis of cavities in the teeth of these Americans shows that they, although having no agriculture, drew heavily on plant resources.
Holocene in Brazil (12,000 - 4,000 BP) Archaeologists call a "phase" a cultural complex where the elements are closely associated. By "tradition" archaeologists mean the standard practices and techniques of the ancients for making, for example, lithic industry and cave paintings. A subtradition is a split within the tradition, usually because there has been a differentiation of the original pattern into two or more new patterns.
At the end of the Pleistocene period, the temperature varied widely in phases of glacier expansion and contraction. It is believed that temperatures were cooler in the Pleistocene than in the Holocene when they experienced a considerable increase. At the beginning of the Middle Archaic period, the sea level was 10 meters lower than it is today. Many regions of the country, such as Piauí, for example, were much wetter than they are today.
Northeast and Center-South Brazil
The Brazilian Paleolithic age is usually situated between 12,000 and 4–2,000 years before the present when the agricultural practice emerged and spread in the region. Before that time, humans lived by hunting, fishing, and gathering, a fact proven by archeological findings and representations in pre-Cabraline paintings. At this time, archaeologists found different types of lithic industries in several regions of Brazil. In the northeast, several archeological sites indicate the development of chipped stone, containing slugs (a slug-shaped lithic artifact used to scrape wooden supports), splinters, awls, and stoves for roasting meat. Rock art was carried out at these early sites.
In the northeast region, the techniques for working with lithic material became increasingly diversified and complex over time. The number of stoves, for example, increased as dating approached the year 8,000 before the present. Campfires were also found.