Having celebrated her ninetieth birthday earlier this yr, the archaeologist Niéde Guidon spoke to Mongabay about her work to guard Brazil’s Serra da Capivara National Park, within the northeastern state of Piauí, which is residence to the biggest and oldest focus of prehistoric artwork within the Americas.On high of her efforts to create the nationwide park, Guidon’s progressive strategy within the Seventies contributed to the social growth of the native communities within the surrounding space by supporting the constructing of colleges, incentivizing tourism, opening a ceramics manufacturing facility and reworking housewives of the area into “guardians” of the park.In the Nineteen Eighties, Guidon challenged the orthodox Clovis First concept, which claimed that Homo sapiens arrived within the Americas 12,000 years in the past by crossing the Bering Strait. The archaeologist claimed to have discovered human stays in Serra da Capivara courting again so far as 32,000 years.Today, the Olho D’Água Institute, created by the present head of the nationwide park, is preserving Guidon’s legacy by persevering with collaborative archaeological work, which includes the native inhabitants in efforts to protect prehistoric heritage.
Niéde Guidon has lengthy since stopped her walks via Serra da Capivara National Park. Living as a recluse for the reason that onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the archaeologist, who retired from her place as president of the Museum of the American Man Foundation (FUMDHAM) in 2020, has change into used to her lifetime of isolation. “At 90, I believe I’ve already labored fairly sufficient. My buddies, volleyball and tennis matches and even a little bit of studying hold me firm [from day to day],” the Franco-Brazilian researcher instructed Mongabay.
Guidon has lived along with her canine in a home in the back of the FUMDHAM, within the metropolis of São Raimundo Nonato, within the rural inside of the northeastern state of Piauí, for 30 years. And now, between journeys between France and Brazil, threats from highly effective figures and scientific achievements, she is celebrating the reopening of the nationwide park that she helped to create, after it had remained closed throughout the pandemic and the insecurity brought on by the federal government of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
The scientist, who celebrated her ninetieth birthday on March 12, has acquired a collection of tributes this yr to mark the event. With her motion now restricted due to the arthritis she developed after having contracted chikungunya in 2016, Guidon has already handpicked the occasions she’s going to attend in particular person. One of those was an occasion that came about on June 9, through which many of the city of São Raimundo Nonato got here out in power to have a good time Guidon’s life and profession.
The occasion was attended by the French Consul General in Recife, Jérémie Faucon, and the performing governor of Piauí, Themístocles Filho, and a complete host of different political and educational personalities who landed on the municipality’s just lately reopened airport — a long-standing want of the archaeologist, who was labeled by some as a “megalomaniac” for the numerous pet tasks she backed all through her life to enhance the social, infrastructural and scientific situations of the world surrounding the park.
Pedra Furada, essentially the most iconic rock formation in Serra da Capivara National Park. Image by Claudia Regina (CC BY-SA 2.0), by way of Wikimedia Commons.
“There was a Piauí and São Raimundo Nonato earlier than Niéde Guidon, and there was one after her,” the mayor of town, Carmelita Castro, instructed the native press on the ceremony, which came about on the grounds of the FUMDHAM, a nonprofit establishment based by Guidon within the Nineteen Eighties with the intention of operating the park, which is residence to a number of the world’s most essential archaeological websites. Today, the world is maintained in partnership with the ICMBio (the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation) and receives assist from a lot of public our bodies, comparable to IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental safety company.
Another attendee on the occasion to pay homage to Guidon was Eric Boëda, a professor and researcher at Paris Nanterre University and at the moment head of the Franco-Brazilian mission that has accompanied Guidon in her work within the park ever since she first made her discoveries. Boëda is, to a sure extent, taking up Guidon’s mantle within the archaeological discipline. On the day of the occasion, the French consul normal from Recife confirmed the French authorities’s plans to fund a brand new mission within the area, a lot to the delight of Guidon.
Disrupting the archaeological consensus
Born within the metropolis of Jaú, in São Paulo state, Niéde Guidon first heard of São Raimundo Nonato 60 years in the past, whereas she was working within the University of São Paulo’s Paulista Museum, after having studied historical past on the identical college. At the time, she was engaged on a images exhibition of prehistoric work that had been found in Lagoa Santa, within the state of Minas Gerais, considered the one of their type in Brazil. It was upon receiving a go to from the then-mayor of the northeastern metropolis of Petrolina that Guidon was made conscious of the existence of “some drawings of caboclos,” because the mayor described them, that bore some resemblance to people who had been the topic of the exhibition. The images that the mayor confirmed Guidon had been of a rock shelter in Serra da Capivara.
Enthused by what she had seen, Guidon excitedly ready a go to to the area to see it firsthand, solely to be held up by a lot of setbacks, main amongst them the fateful yr of 1964, the primary of the Brazilian army dictatorship, which loomed over the nation and compelled Guidon into exile. She fled to France, the nation through which, years earlier than, she had performed a specialization in prehistoric archaeology at Sorbonne University. The archaeologist would solely make it to São Raimundo Nonato in 1973, after eight years in Paris.
From 1973 onward, and for the remainder of her life, Guidon can be referred to as “physician” by everybody within the metropolis. Her persistence and power of will modified not solely the lives of lots of the area’s inhabitants, however the course of the sphere of Brazilian archaeology.
Niéde Guidon working at an excavation website throughout her first years in Serra da Capivara. Image courtesy of the Acervo FUMDHAM.
One of her most well-known theories is on the courting of when the Americas had been first settled by people: Guidon found stays of bonfires on the archeological website of Boqueirão da Pedra Furada that she claimed dated from 32,000 years in the past, a concept she detailed in a 1986 article for Nature journal. The piece precipitated a sensation on this planet of archaeology, because it posed a direct problem to the extensively believed Clovis First concept, which argues that the Americas had been settled round 12,000 years in the past via migration throughout the Bering Strait. According to Guidon, Homo sapiens arrived on the continent from Africa not less than 100,000 years in the past.
Researchers and archaeologists, primarily from North America, have continued to dispute Guidon’s theories to today. Discoveries within the fields of genetics and biochemistry have seen Guidon’s theories acquire extra consistency yr by yr, with a brand new wave of researchers more and more assured within the courting proposed by the archaeologist.
“Today I’m retired, however I can say that there’s all the time the necessity for scientific theories to be confirmed. I imagine that our work was performed with the utmost rigor, information and professionalism. If there are nonetheless these for whom doubts persist, they need to do the identical work after which disagree or agree with due reasoning,” the archaeologist stated.
Prehistoric artwork on a rock face at an archaeological website in Serra da Capivara National Park. Image courtesy of Janine Moraes/MinC.
A nationwide park in the midst of Brazil’s arid backlands
“In the primary years right here [in Serra da Capivara], we realized that the overwhelming poverty within the area would by no means enable us to guard the park’s prehistoric legacy. Someone who’s going hungry solely thinks about how they will remedy their fast issues,” Guidon stated.
Guidon recalled the principle impediment when she arrived within the city of Coronel José Dias, neighboring São Raimundo Nonato. The researcher noticed up shut the tough actuality of the native inhabitants, who survived on the meager harvest from their agriculture and didn’t have entry to electrical energy, training or well being care. They didn’t even start to think about the prehistoric treasures hidden beneath the bottom: greater than 800 archaeological websites with cave work and engravings as a lot as 12,000 years outdated.
Over time, as analysis progressed on the area’s archaeological websites with a group of archaeologists and scientists from throughout Brazil and the world, Guidon began to attraction to the native authorities, private and non-private establishments and politicians to show their consideration towards Serra da Capivara. In 1979, six years after arriving within the rural a part of Piaí, she managed to get the Brazilian federal authorities to create Serra da Capivara National Park, measuring 100,000 hectares (247,105 acres) and unfold over the municipalities of São Raimundo Nonato, João Costa, Brejo do Piauí and Coronel José Dias. It was the beginning of a dream.
Landscape in Serra da Capivara National Park. Image by Carlos Souto by way of Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Merely delineating the park’s boundaries was not sufficient, nonetheless. Social work with the native inhabitants additionally needed to be carried out each day. One of an important steps on this regard was the creation of the Museum of the American Man Foundation (FUMDHAM), the park’s administrative physique. Ever because it was based, it has held the social, financial and cultural growth of the world amongst its main objectives, with the physique’s administration plan dedicated to integrating the native inhabitants into conservation efforts for the park.
With the creation of the park, many households who lived in Serra da Capivara had been pressured to go away their land. Guidon did what she may to relocate these native residents to different homes. She noticed the proper to housing as a private battle however confronted obstacles within the form of native insurance policies. The penalties had been assorted, with some residents who misplaced their land leaving the world, whereas others, who stayed, improved their lives and took benefit of the brand new insurance policies. This is a course of that was detailed within the e-book Niéde Guidon: An Archeologist within the Sertão, by the journalist Adriana Abujamra, which was printed in April.
“To discuss Niéde is to speak concerning the previous, the Caatinga, the surroundings. Niéde’s story holds so many different tales, comparable to her work to empower the ladies who had been by her aspect,” Abujamra instructed Mongabay. For the journalist, the picture of an impartial, confident feminine “physician” arriving within the Sertão — as Brazil’s arid backlands are identified — driving a rustic wagon whereas wearing a pair of denims, is a really symbolic one. “To today, femicide ranges are very excessive within the northeast. Just think about, again within the Seventies, a lady ready of energy arriving within the park. Managing others, contracting employees, incentivizing ladies to free themselves from submission,” Abujamra added.
A quartz arrowhead present in Serra da Capivara. Image by Guilherme Jofili by way of Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).
One of Guidon’s most well-known strikes was her resolution to advertise lots of the area’s housewives into guardians of Serra da Capivara National Park. Known regionally as “guariteiras,” these ladies would stand on the park’s entrances and information guests, defend the park’s perimeter and stop the looking of untamed animals.
All of this began when, in the future, on one among her walks, she discovered one of many guardhouses in disarray. In the following dialogue with the safety employee, she heard a sexist rationalization about “who ought to clear the place.” This led Guidon to resolve to show the position into one fulfilled by ladies. Over the a long time, different roles which have historically been the protect of males have been demystified, a lot in order that at the moment many native ladies have their very own sources of revenue, whether or not that be from working in native companies, within the ceramics manufacturing facility or within the nationwide park itself.
Incentivizing social growth
Marian Rodrigues, the present head of Serra da Capivara National Park, instructed Mongabay that as a bit of woman rising up locally of Várzea Grande, at the moment referred to as Coronel José Dias, she noticed the approaching and going of researchers with fascination. Her father, who was the one one within the village to have a automotive within the Seventies, used to take them to the archaeological excavation websites.
“In our heads we imagined that it was gold that they had been taking from there, as a result of they had been all the time speaking about an “archaeological treasure,” Rodrigues stated. “I actually wished to grasp what it was all about, so I went into educating, one of many few professions {that a} girl may do on the time.” Rodrigues adopted the transformation of the world from the very begin, from the demarcation of the park’s boundaries to the revolts, the victories and the legends that surrounded Guidon.
An archaeological website in Serra da Capivara National Park. Image by Diego Rego Monteiro by way of Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
It was no marvel. One of the distinctive examples of Guidon’s work in Serra da Capivara got here within the Nineteen Nineties, when FUMDHAM’s tasks had been going from power to power. The Community Support Nucleus was born, with the intention of supporting the development of full-time faculties and well being clinics on this rural nook of Piauí. Teachers moved to the area from São Paulo, in addition to educators from universities such because the University of São Paulo. Together, they developed a first-rate, progressive curriculum utilizing pioneering strategies to show topics comparable to environmental research, artwork and standard music.
“Bit by bit I used to be launched to conservationist concepts and I understood that I could possibly be one thing greater than a main faculty instructor. I wished to seek for solutions with a view to perceive what was taking place with the neighborhood, the park, and I used to be in a position to get deeply concerned in analysis,” stated Rodrigues, who labored within the native faculties on the time.
Rodrigues labored at FUMDHAM for 12 years, all the time with the intention of “turning into a health care provider,” identical to Guidon. During her time at FUMDHAM, Rodrigues had contact with lecturers from many components of the world who would come to the muse to hold out analysis on the park’s archaeological websites. Years later, when Rodrigues was fulfilling her objective of doing a Ph.D., in Portugal, she based the Olho D’Água Institute, a nonprofit group based on the rules of what’s referred to as collaborative archaeology.
“We need to promote a relationship between the neighborhood and the park, about how archaeological tasks should be carried out in partnership with the area people at each stage of the method.” In July this yr, the institute celebrated its tenth yr.
Rodrigues’ venture follows the identical beliefs as Guidon’s pioneering work in selling training within the Brazilian Sertão. The Olho D’Água Institute has already skilled lots of of native residents to work in companies and tourism actions. For Guidon, who arrived in São Raimundo Nonato when town didn’t even have primary sanitation amenities, her struggles and campaigns over time have remodeled into concrete change, comparable to the development of the ceramic manufacturing facility, eating places, inns and guesthouses, in addition to the event of beekeeping within the area and the development of the much-anticipated São Raimundo Nonato airport.
“When Doctor [Niéde] celebrated her ninetieth birthday, I took some flowers to her home, and she or he checked out me and stated, ‘Take care of the park, okay?’ It made me nervous,” Rodrigues recounted, visibly emotional.
“I all the time say that I simply did my job, and now I see the area altering so rapidly and rising, with the essential participation of the native inhabitants,” Guidon stated. “Young individuals are not migrating as a lot as previously as a result of they discover jobs right here. Private enterprise is rising daily; individuals are much less reliant on the state than they had been. The two actions that we based within the hope that, in the future, the area would develop — that’s, tourism and beekeeping — are at the moment profitable and virtually self-sustaining. There continues to be work to do, but it surely seems to be like there is no such thing as a means again now. São Raimundo Nonato has its place on the world map.”
Banner picture: Niéde Guidon. Image courtesy of André Pessoa /Projeto Raízes do Piauí.
This story was reported by Mongabay’s Brazil group and first printed right here on our Brazil website on July 31, 2023.
Citation
Guidon, N., & Delibrias, G. (1986). Carbon-14 dates level to man within the Americas 32,000 years in the past. Nature, 321(6072), 769-771. doi:10.1038/321769a0
