Through a presentation of the oldest rock art dated in the Americas, located in Monte Alegre, Brazil, this book analyzes an ancient ecological-astronomy strategy that theoretically made the rapid human migration in the Americas successful. It helps answer two vital questions long held by scholars and the general public alike: How did humans survive the rapid and massive climate changes at the end of the ice age? And how did founding populations (especially in the Americas) manage successful settlement, relatively rapidly, in ecosystems entirely foreign to them? It further initiates questions about the universal role that astronomy (and even astrology) might have played in cognitive human evolution and the success of burgeoning sedentism and eventual "civilization" throughout the world. The book makes a substantial contribution because of the wealth of cultural information it provides from Monte Alegre. It explains the author's analysis of pictographs, lithics, and landscape modifications that were excavated there and provides novel findings on the chronology and archaeoastronomy of the art.
This book is indispensable for courses about Paleoindians, peopling of the Americas, environmental anthropology, cosmology, rock art studies, archeoastronomy, paleoecology, paleoethnobotany, and Amazonia. The pan-American indications of this work will appeal to archaeologists, historians, art historians, folklorists, Native American and Indigenous scholars, evolutionists, cognitive scientists, geographers, and the general public.
Introduction: Monte Alegre Rock Art.- Geology and Climate Since the Last
Ice Age.- Phenology and Ecology of Monte Alegre State Park.- Historical
Accounts of the Rock Art.- Serra Da Lua and Serra Do Sol Rock Art.-
Archaeoastronomy at Serra Da Lua and Serra Do Sol.- Stone Tools and Artifacts
at Ererź.- Excavation and Investigation at Painel Do Pilao.- Solar-Aligned
Pictographs at Painel Do Pilao.- Descendants or Inheritors?.
Christopher Davis is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in Amazonian prehistory, rock art, and archeoastronomy. With multiple grants and fellowships, he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Dartmouth College, and from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) he earned a master's in anthropology and a doctorate in archaeology. He was a participant in archaeological excavations and GIS research on Easter Island (Rapa Nui) and in prehistoric pottery analysis in Puerto Rico before he joined Dr. Anna Roosevelt's surveys and excavations in the Brazilian city of Santarém, Para, along the Lower Amazon River. As a Fulbright awardee, he completed his doctoral dissertation as the principal investigator of cave, rock-shelter, and open-air excavationsalong with rock art and archaeoastronomy field researchin the rainforest hills of Monte Alegre, also on the banks of Brazil's Lower Amazon River. He also collaborated with specialists in the elemental analysis of the pigment, which demonstrated that the rock art paint and the pigment in the excavated layers came from the same geological source of ochre. Davis' long-term research involves traditional knowledge mnemonics and transmission among Amazonian peoples since the terminal Pleistocene/Holocene period, and study of the ways in which people have recognized and adapted to climatic and environmental changes at that time. Davis attempts to discern their sense of intention and innovation to discover and pass down, or share, recognized patterns and successful cultural strategies.
Davis is a rising scholar in Amazonian archaeology who has published peer-reviewed articles. Ever since the debut of his rock art and archeoastronomy research in the 2018 PBS documentary mini series, "Native America: From Caves to Cosmos", he has been sought as a specialist in the field of rock art and ancient astronomy by scholars and independent investigators alike. Davis has most recently appeared in season 2 of Graham Hancocks Netflix Series, Ancient Apocalypse. Where some of these research is featured in episode 2 and episode 6. He has also contributed research photos to Graham Hancock's commercial book, America Before.
