Record Amazon Drought Reveals Ancient Human Face Carvings and Tool Sharpening Grooves in Riverbed

Drought conditions, worsened by climate change and predicted to persist through early 2024, unveil more ancient carvings in Amazon than ever before, hint at region's rich pre-Columbian history and raise concerns for local ecology and communities.

• Severe drought conditions in the Amazon region, worsened by climate change and predicted to persist through early 2024, have led to the revealing of more ancient carvings in the riverbed than ever before, primarily depicting human faces and various flora and fauna.
• The petroglyphs are located at an archaeological site known as the Ponto das Lajes (Place of Slabs) on the shores of the Rio Negro, in the Brazilian part of the Amazon river.
• The carvings were first discovered in 2010 when water levels dropped by 44 feet due to drought, but this year's water drop is even worse, dangerously drying tributaries and threatening local marine life as well as isolating remote communities.
• Along with the carvings, researchers have found grooves in the rocks that suggest it was an area used to sharpen tools, indicating that these locations were home to large Indigenous communities in the pre-Columbian era (roughly 1000 BCE to 1000 CE).
• The current extreme drought in South America is being attributed to an El Niño weather pattern and warming in the North Atlantic linked to human-made climate change and is causing significant ecological and social impact, including endangered species at risk and the shutdown of a major hydropower plant.

3 Articles

ARTnews Popular Science Al Jazeera