BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF DR. FRED OLSEN

Fred Olson was born 28 February, 1891 in Newcastle-on-Tyne, . At the age of 15 he emigrated to , where he entered the University of Toronto and was the recipient of the Edward Blake Scholarship in chemistry—defeating 3,000 examinees in a nation-wide competition. Olson received his BA and MA in chemistry in 1916 and 1917, respectively. Dr. Olson was awarded an honorary doctorate from Washington University, St. Louis, for his many research achievements in chemistry. In 1917 he married Florence Quittenton of Toronto.

During World War I, Dr. Olson was loaned by the Canadian govern­ ment to the to assist in the manufacture of munitions. He was put in charge of US Army research at the Picatiny, New Jersey arsensal, where he became aware of the high incidence of explosions and consequent injuries and fatalities in the powder factories. As a result of his observations, Dr. Olson developed a safe and widely adopted technique for manufacturing explosives under water (ball powder). This innovation greatly reduced the hazard of explosion in the powder factories; in fact, during World War II not a single casualty was incurred by US Army personnel during the manufacture of munitions.

After the War, Dr. Olson was employed by Olin-Matheson as Vice President in charge of research until his retirement. In 1960 he bought a house at the Mill Reef Club, Antigua, West Indies. There he discovered the Mill Reef archaeological site, which he called to the attention of Professor Irving Rouse of the Department of Anthropology, . Dr. Charles Hoffman, Northern Arizona University, was brought to Antigua by Dr. Olson to conduct excavations at the site. At Mill Reef, Dr. Olson collected the first C-14 sample from the Antilles, and arranged for its analysis.

Dr. Olson's interest in archaeology derives from his long-standing interest in modern (abstract) art. He established the Olson Foundation to prepare traveling art exhibits for world-wide exposure. He has also donated large art collections to such noted institutions of higher learning as the College of William and Mary and Yale University.

The contributions of Dr. Olson to prehistory are many. He founded the Antigua Archaeological Society and the Mill Reef Diggers Digest. He has written two books, ON THE TRAIL OF THE ARAWAKS, and INDIAN CREEK: AN ARAWAK SITE ON ANTIGUA, WEST INDIES (both published in 1974 by the University of Oklahoma Press). In 1979, Dr. Olson was elected Honorary President of the International Association for Caribbean Archaeology, and was chosen to deliver the Bradshaw Memorial Lecture at the Eighth International Congress on St. Kitts. Although not a professional archaeologist, Dr. Olson's important contributions to Caribbean prehistory are widely recognized and appreciated by amateurs and professionals alike in this growing area of research.

2 THE ARAWAKS - THEIR ART, RELIGION, AND SCIENCE

Fred 01sen

I have spent considerable time during the past twenty years becoming acquainted with the Arawaks. My personal adventure began in the neighboring island of Antigua.

Also, I have known several highly competent archeologists who specialize in the Arawaks. Among these scholars who have been particularly helpful to me were Professor Irving Rouse of Yale, Dr- José Cruxent of , and Dr. Reichel Dolmatoff, formerly of Colombia. I have read their scholarly works, so I know that the proper thing for me to do is to talk about potsherds. However, I shall refer to these only briefly.

I am sufficiently keenly aware of my amateur standing in this field that I must make it thoroughly clear that what I am going to do today is to try and conjure up as plausible a story as possible to show you what I think, or feel, or imagine might be the way these ancient Arawak peoples regarded their art, their religion, and their science. But I am also going to try and make it clear just what is fact and what is fancy.

First of all, I consider that the Arawaks had a high degree of artistic competence, and also an esthetic understanding of both painting and sculpture. I shall begin by showing two photos of the artistic achievement of one Arawak tribe that I like to call the Painter Arawaks (Figures 1 and 2).

Obviously, the design is good. The forms have a simple and pleasing elegance and are competently executed. Today, they would be accepted by my artist friends as makers of a highly acceptable product of the current 'hard-line' school.

Actually, the pots were first covered with a red paint and later with a coat of white. They used a sharp tool to scrape through the white coat to reveal the red below. Indeed, the marks of the tool are clearly shown as it removed the top white coating. These sherds were dug during our excavation of the Indian Creek site, Antigua, in 1973-

Figures 3 and 4 show animal heads, used as handles for pots, made by the Sculptor Arawaks at the villages of Barrancas and Los Barrancos in Venezuela at the apex of the Orinoco Delta. These heads are gener­ ally referred to as 'adornos.' They are certainly well-sculptured, and I submit that they are competently and esthetically the work of real artists.

Figure 5 shows a bowl which was reconstructed from 65 sherds dug in St. Croix in the Lesser Antilles. Actually, it is two-thirds Arawak potsherds and one-third plaster.

3 Figure 6 shows a similarly reconstructed bowl of the Sculptor Arawaks; it is about 90 percent original sherds and 10 percent plaster, dug at Mill Reef in Antigua.

I think these two restored pots give a fair picture of the kind of dishes these early Arawaks probably used for serving their daily food; I consider that they compare quite favorably with what people of cultivated taste would use today.

I will add a tiny piece of speculation here as to the possible origin of these Painter and Sculptor Arawaks. The sculptors' earliest record in South America is at Puerto Hormiga • in Colombia, where elaborate adornos in the form of crocodile heads have been found as early as 3000 BC; and is, as far as I know, the earliest pottery in South America. As to the origin of the painted ceramics, I feel much less confident but will hazard a guess that the painted pottery originated in the upper reaches of the Amazon tributaries, or even in Valdivia in Ecuador-

Now I wish to turn to the religion of the Arawaks. We are all familiar with the elaborately sculptured zemies, in the form of carved stone figures of the male deity, Yocahu (Figure 7), who the Arawaks say gave them manioc. He frequently has a well-defined male head (Figure 8) but almost always has a tall conical, peaked back, usually described as like a volcano (Figure 9). These stone zemies are found abundantly in Puerto Rico and in Haiti, but they are not found on the South American mainland. At least, I have no knowledge of any such zemies having been excavated in Venezuela or Colombia.

At first this is quite puzzling, but I am inclined to reason that Arawaks, long accustomed to the flat llanos and savannahs of Venezuela, were astonished when they started up the chain of islands of the Lesser Antilles, to encounter the large number of volcanic peaks (Figure 10). I think we can justifiably picture the surprise of the Arawaks when they witnessed their first volcanic eruption. The issuance of fire from the cone of the volcano and of molten rock rolling down its side very likely stimulated the idea that such phenomena could not be the work of man, but must be due to their gods.

I have mentioned that we have come across no examples of these volcano-shaped zemies during any of our digging in Venezuela. But in every place in the Lesser Antilles we discover zemies of carved stone, becoming simpler in form the deeper we dig. In the lower layers, if 400 AD or even earlier, the stone zemies give way to conical forms carved from the prongs of conch shells (Figure 11). Frequently, these are quite numerous (Figure 12) and some of them are so simple in form that they consist of little more than the cut-off prongs of the conch (Figure 13).

Occasionally, in both the Lesser and the Greater Antilles Islands, other carved stones are found which show the male figure but without the volcano-peaked back. Some authors refer to these as Yocahu in the

h form of a sun god. One of these as a head surrounded by the sun's rays (Figure 14) occurs on a long 'marker stone' from the Ball Court at Capa, Puerto Rico. With the mention of the Ball Court markers, I must cite another Yocahu head on an L-shaped marker stone, also from Capa, with part of the circle of stones shown in the background (Figure 15).

Two more male heads were found, one ceramic from Mill Reef, Antigua (Figure 16), and the other a beautifully carved conch shell head, presumably used as an amulet, from Montserrat (Figure 17)-

The collections of carved stones which are found in Puerto Rico and Haiti show another kind of figure readily recognizable as being female, since several female characteristics are apparent, even including examples of the emergence of the babe at childbirth (Figure 18). The Arawaks gave the name of Atabeyra - 'The Mother Deity' - to this female deity.

Atabeyra was apparently just as important a deity as the male god of Yocahu, judging by the number of carved figures found. One of these was an oval squatting figure, with hands clasped across her breast (Figure 19) from Haiti. But this same form is common in Puerto Rico, where she is found as a petroglyph on a ball-court marker at Capa (Figure 20).

Also in Haiti was found a large cache of carved limestone figures, which I am interpreting as votive offerings by visitors to shrines of Atabeyra. One of these, a much larger carved figure (Figure 21) was also found in the cache.

In Puerto Rico an Arawak sculptor achieved a stone Atabeyra (Figure 22) which, although only about six inches high, gives the feeling of being a truly monumental form. A second stone Atabeyra is a marvelous example of abstract sculpture (Figure 23), which seems to have anticipated one of our modern trends (See OTA Figure 28, p. 106).

There is a third deity which is commonly called the dog god, which the Arawaks named Opiel-Gua-Obiran (Arawakan for 'the dog deity who takes care of the souls of the immediately deceased,' and which is the son of the spirit of darkness. This sounds to me somewhat similar to the Greek and Roman Cerberus, a dog with three heads, who guarded the entrance to Hades, the infernal regions.

I have several of these dog deities (see Figure 24), this one with a hole lengthwise through the head and which divides into a Y-shape. It is almost certainly a device to allow the shaman to sniff a narcotic powder into his own nostrils, prior to going into a trance. The magic element would be contributed by the passage of the 'snuff' through the body of the dog deity.

Another form of the dog deity shows the complete animal (Figure 25). This dog is shown in its shrine (Figure 26) complete with equipment; the double conical stone for crushing narcotic leaves; the

5 bird-shaped stone for grinding the crushed leaves; the small turtle bowl to hold the powdered narcotic; the Y-shaped snuffing tube used by the shaman to sniff at the powder; the carved wooden table for receiving votive offerings, and the carved bone swallowing stick which the shaman must use after performing his ablutions in the sea to cleanse himself externally; he then uses the vomiting stick to cleanse himself internally.

It would almost seem as if these practitioners of Arawak religion, namely, the shamans, might be members of the sculptor Arawak group, since all of their deities are definitely 'sculptured forms.' I must comment, however, that we are not at present able to trace back the shape of the female deity or the dog deity to any such simpler initial form, as we were able to do with the Yocahu zemi.

Clearly, the Arawaks have developed a high degree of esthetic sensitivity in both their utilization of ceramics for handling their food, and in the sculptured forms of deities for use in developing their religious rituals.

I now come to the third and final part of my story. Here I shall try to submit adequate evidence supporting my contention that the Arawaks actually developed considerable competence in scientific techniques, enough for them to have made totally unexpected advances into the field of astronomy, possibly much more advanced and much earlier than those accomplished by the Incas of Peru, and perhaps even earlier than the building of the Stonehenge megalith.

It was all due to my old friend, José Cruxent, the leading Venezuelan archeologist, who told me one day that he had just seen a cave with presumably aboriginal paintings on its walls. He offered to take us there.

A word as to the approximate location of the cave. I am avoiding giving any specific location, because I do not yet know if Venezuela has taken steps to prevent vandalism of this unique heritage of aboriginal culture. All I shall say is that the cave is some twenty miles south of the Orinoco in a vast stretch of savannah land (Figure 27) with a large number of strange heaps of granite boulders. Actually, this cave is the largest and most spectacular of these granite masses (Figure 28), and I believe would have been attractive to some ancient shaman, who saw it as a choice spot for conducting the mysterious rituals of his tribe.

The huge granite slab which is the roof of the cave (Figure 29) may weigh more than a thousand tons, and it is on the flat underside of this cave roof and on the faces of its supporting rocks that the paintings are found.

Incidentally, a geologist friend tells me that the base rock on which this case rests is part of the tectonic plate on which South America floats and is well over a billion years old.

6 The first painting that we noticed was an animal figure on a small rock below the stone cover, a close-up of which is shown in Figure 30. This appears to be an animal with a large head a long curved tail. Later, on our way home from the cave, we stopped to see a newly discovered ball court at Tikal in Guatemala. There among the trees we saw what appeared to be the same animal (Figure 31), which I recognized as the coatimundi, somewhat similar to the racoon and a favorite food of the Arawaks. Since the cave has not yet been recorded, I am taking the liberty of calling it 'Cueva Coati.'

Our attention was attracted almost immediately to a large group of paintings shown in Figure 32. A detail of this is shown in Figure 33» which I am interpreting as representing a 'bird shaman,' whose arms, torso and legs are boldly outlined in white bands. Above the torso extend two narrow lines of a neck, topped by an oval head with a long sharp bird-bill pointing left and a crest on the right.

On our second visit to the cave, we were able to secure a somewhat clearer picture of the bird shaman (Figure 31*) which shows a figure to the left in thin red lines, which Dr. Cruxent interprets as a much earlier picture of the shaman, because it is much less stylized than the white-band figure. On the right side of the shaman is a long reddish animal which appears to be a crocodile with a long snout, two prominent and protruding eyes (which are characteristic of a crocodile when it emerges above the water). It has two front paws with claws. The hind legs are not so clear, but the long pointed tail is sharply shown.

To the upper right of this bird shaman is a figure similar to that described by Abbé Breuil as 'copulating snakes' (Figure 35).

Figure 36 has been identified by marine biologists at Woods Hole as being some form of horseshoe crab, although I know of no horseshoe crabs reported on the Orinoco.

Figure 37 shows figures frequently encountered in French cave paintings, and designated by the same Abbé Breuil as male and female genitals, suggesting that fertility rituals may have been practiced at the site.

Figure 38 shows a figure which some people have suggested is a hunter with his outstretched left arm holding a weapon, perhaps a type of slingshot. I am adding that the spirit of the hunter is shown to the left, which several Amerind tribes say can often be seen under certain favorable conditions.

Figure 39 is a photograph made by Professor Irving Rouse, my anthropologist friend from Yale. It clearly shows a black hand to the right. The only suggestion that has been offered as to identification of a tailed circular symbol is that it may be a griddle.

7 Figure 40 shows my grandson Kit pointing to a clump of crosses which might represent stars; a circle with radiating lines to the left of Kit's head has been suggested by some to be the sun. However, we came across several similar circular figures, and decided to designate them as crabs whenever there were ten rays, since the crab is a decapod. I would like to point out that this last remark is evidence that I was already on the lookout for any examples that might indicate an interest in astronomy on the part of the Arawaks.

Figure 41 shows an animal which José Cruxent identifies as a mammoth; since he has located more than 200 mammoth sites, where the bones have been carbon 14 dated all the way from 16,000 BC to about 5000 BC, I have the feeling that this might be a very desirable way of dating the cave, since it would mean that the hunter had seen the mammoth before it became extinct. I'm certainly not going to challenge Dr. Cruxent's identification.

Figure 42 shows what we call the 'lizard rock,' since a lizard is shown in the top left-hand corner. There are a number of figures below the lizard which I was studying closely, when I received an excited call from both my daughter Liz and my grandson Kit. 'You must climb up to the ledge on which we are sitting, because we have just found a big rock face with a mass of paintings. They are most peculiar paintings, and we don't know what to make of them.'

I quickly spotted where they were, and wondered how on earth I could climb the sheer face of the rock on which they were sitting. But with much pushing by the powerful Pedro, my ranchero assistant, and tugging by both Liz and Kit, I somehow found myself on the ledge beside them. There was not much sitting room, and I couldn't lean back more than two or three feet from the wall to try for a wide sweep with my camera of the strangest pictures I had yet seen. I found myself right in front of the picture shown (Figure 43), which at first glance looked like a standing man, perhaps holding a spear in his right hand. (Later on, Kit named this the Sky God, and I have gladly retained this nickname.) But for quite awhile I had no idea what I was observing. We could see that the rock face stretched about 15 or 20 feet, and that it was covered with sharp linear figures.

Literally wiggling by inches along the ledge to the right, we were confused by the items shown in Figure 44, and indeed remained confused for several months. But looking ahead a few feet I was attracted by a couple of prominent ovals connect by straight-line elements that seemed to form a much simpler and more organized figure, apparently separated somewhat from the rest of the panel (Figure 45). We paused in front of it and I saw that the upper oval contained only one dot, but in the lower oval I counted seven dots. Seven dots. Could these be the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters?

I remembered my early excursions into Greek mythology. The god Atlas had produced seven daughters by the nymph Pleione, and these were

8 called the Seven (Pleiades) sisters. But what about the upper oval ring with its larger single dot? Could this be a single large star, Sirius, which is the brightest star in the sky?

For the time being, I called this the Pleiades section of the panel, and was inwardly excited that this might be substantial evidence for an interest in astronomy by the Arawaks.

Immediately beyond this 'Pleiades' section was an object that looked like a flying bird (Figure 46) and to its right a set of three roughly parallel lines. Not having any idea what these two figures might mean, I moved to the next feature that caught my attention. This was a group of six circles shown in Figure 47. I was struck with the fact that three of the smaller (lower) circles were on a slightly slanting line. It did not take long to make a guess—could this be Orion's Belt? The Belt is one of the best known and most easily recognized group of stars, and is used by amateur astronomers for quickly locating the hunter Orion, whenever that constellation is visible.

But something was wrong here: the 'sword' which always hangs down from the middle star on the belt, when viewed by looking at the southern sky, was here pointing 'upward.' Nevertheless, even if this figure were upside down, according to my sense of orientation, the large circle at the end of the upright line would be Riegel, a star of the first magnitude which forms the left foot of the legendary hero Orion.

The left half of Figure 47 now was seen to contain two strange figures: one immediately to the left of 'Orion' comprises a small circle with a central dot surrounded by five smaller circles, each with still smaller central dots. Below this pentagonal figure are three roughly parallel vertical lines. I had no idea what these might mean, and indeed it has taken the best part of a couple of years before I arrived at what I now regard as a possible interpretation. I consider the pentagon figure as representing the sun, and suggest that this may be the position of the sun at the Winter Solstice, the group of three vertical lines might be the shaman's way of depicting the barrier beyond which the sun cannot pass at its solstice.

I must here make reference to what I regard as a most significant item of scientific importance. During a trip to San Francisco, I paid a visit to Dorothy Mayer, a well-known student of Amerind petroglyphs, rock paintings or incised drawings, that she had studied for many years. I showed her a slide of this phenomenon and her immediate comment was, 'You notice this long sawtooth or comb-like line attached to the left-hand circle of the belt. Whenever I see this comb, I invariably find that this signifies the star to which it is attached is either on the ecliptic or an astronomical equator.' Sure enough—this member of Orion's Belt is exactly on the Galatic Equator.

9 This single incident was perhaps the most striking example of the precision employed by these early Amerind astronomers in recording the scientific data they were observing.

When we returned home to Connecticut and received our slides from the processed film, I saw that we had actually overlapped our photographs so that we could produce a continuous picture of the whole panel as a drawing which is shown in Figure 48.

There now began a long patient study of the details of this panel. I continued to be dominated by the idea that the whole panel was the shaman's recording of observed astronomical objects. I picked out the Pleiades section as the one on which to work. Naturally, I appealed to the standard literature to see if the Pleiades fitted into any Amerind affairs. I soon found that the setting of the Pleiades at dusk denotes the first day of the year among several of the South American tribes. But how did he arrive at the concept of a new year.

Presumably, the shaman became conscious of a cyclical system in the movement of the sun, the moon and the stars. I feel sure he assumed that these spots of light were actually whirling round the earth which also seemed solidly stationary to him; and I assume that the periodicity of the 'new' crescent moons occurred to him as worthy of being noted, perhaps recorded by a notch on a stick, which eventually he saw happened after he had made what we would designate about 28 scratches on the stick as each day passed.

Moreover, with tribes along the Orinoco, the heliacal setting (i.e., setting at dusk) of Pleiades also denotes the beginning of the wet season, which I suppose meant to the shaman that he had to get ready for a new season of growing manioc, their staple food. This makes the Pleiades seem quite an important item to occupy the shaman's attention. Actually, the Arawak term for the Pleiades is YOROO, and this is the only Arawak word for any of the constellations as far as I am aware.

Continued examination of the Pleiades section (Figure 45) suggested that the angular lines connecting the two ovals might be the V-shape commonly used to designate the Hyades; and to support this there is a strong dot at the upper end of the V. This dot could be Aldebaran. Then to the left of the vertical line joining the two ovals there is a pair of dots, which I guessed might be Castor and Pollux. I now wondered if the heliacal settings of these stars were also being observed by the shaman.

I consulted some astronomy books regarding the heliacal setting dates of the stars indicated in Figure 45, but not finding what I needed I wrote to Professor Orren C. Mohler at the Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who very kindly furnished information that the heliacal setting of Pleiades occurs on May 20; of the Hyades with Aldebaran on May 28 (i.e., 8 days later); Sirius sets June 26 (nearly a month later than Aldebaran); and Castor

10 and Pollux set in mid-July (i.e., another 3 weeks later). This was indeed astonishing information, and showed that the shaman had placed these constellations in a simple geometric pattern in an exact counterclockwise set of positions, corresponding to the heliacal settings of these stars.

While I was gathering this information, I recalled that when my wife and I made a boat trip a thousand miles up the Orinoco in May 19631 we had found that the main activity of the natives along the river during the whole month of May was the preparation of new fields for growing manioc.

I now offer the hypothesis that the shaman had watched the setting of the Pleiades shortly after dusk, perhaps for many evenings, and had ordered the cutting of trees, and their burning, for a new manioc garden. Perhaps he had told the people to start cutting down the trees at the new moon a few weeks prior to the New Year. He told them that this task must be completed before the New Year began; namely, before the heliacal setting of the Pleiades (on May 20).

I can picture the shaman saying to the tribe, 'I'll tell you later when to plant the manioc,' and then he would give the signal for the planting at the heliacal setting of Aldebaran (i.e., on May 28).

The Shaman's desire to record these observations of the various steps in the planting schedule is understandable, because this would constitute one of his major contributions to the 'management' of the food requirements of the tribe.

Then what was the significance of the setting of Sirius on June 26? The technical literature is quite eloquent on this subject. The setting of Sirius is the signal for the main festival of the year among many Amerind tribes of South America. We had encountered this festival in Peru, among the Incas (who probably are not related to the Arawaks). There it is known as the 'Intip Raymi' (which in the Quechua language means the Festival of the Sun God). It is a week-long festival, starting with the setting of Sirius, and with much praying to the gods for the proper rain and sunshine for their crops (which in the case of the Incas would be mainly potatoes and corn). There is also a great deal of dancing and drinking of Chicha, a wine or beer made from fermented manioc (or fermented maize with the Incas). By the time Castor and Pollux set at dusk in mid-July, the manioc should be well advanced. I wouldn't be surprised if planting of the manioc garden had been more or less a continuous operation throughout the month of June; and it may be that the significance of the Castor and Pollux recording had been to indicate that the planting operations should be completed by the middle of July because the dry weather and the heat of summer were unfavorable for the tender newly sprouted plants beyond that date.

Likewise, the shaman's obligations for the preparation of the festival of Intip Raymi would involve such items as acquiring a stock

11 of chicha wine, assembling the dancers, and preparing for other details of the dramatic event.

His decision to record these directions for conducting his shaman- istic obligations to the tribe by resorting to the use of a 'picture language' in the painting of the constellations, is evidence of marked intelligence, because there is no hint of the existence of any written verbal language among the Arawaks.

I now refer to the data shown on Figure 45 as 'The Planting Sched­ ule.' By this time I had guessed that the whole panel of paintings might be the shaman's attempt to record the entire sweep of stars visible at Cueva Coati from about 7 PM to midnight, perhaps in December-

With this idea in mind I decided to arrange the various photographs, which covered the full panel of this painted wall in a single picture. Actually, there were varying amounts of overlaps between each pair of photographs, but with no missing gaps whatsoever. So I was satisfied that a composite drawing of the separate tracings would represent the complete panel of the constellations of the cave wall. Figure 48 shows my own attempt to bring together the entire sweep of the panels on one slide.

The obvious next step was to consult the Standard Constellation Chart (SCC), and see to what degree the panel of paints coincided with the chart.

It was immediately evident from the Standard Constellation Chart that the apparent discrepancy of Orion's Belt being upside down (as previously stated) was due to the fact that Orion was shown on the right-hand end position of the painted panel, whereas on the SCC it is to the East (left-hand) side of the Equinoctial Colure. By turning the drawing in Figure 48 through 180°, Orion and his belt now appear just as they occur in the SCC. The sword is now seen to be hanging properly down from the middle star in Orion's belt. Indeed, it is seen that the congruence of the SCC chart and the drawing of the star panel is quite close (with but few exceptions).

This rotation of the drawing through 180° seems entirely appropriate since the shaman while he was painting the panel, had evidently looked back over his shoulder at the sky and placed Orion on the right-hand end of the wall, whereas the current convention is to place Orion on the eastern side of the SCC, which is the left side of the chart. I was now tempted to go back to the 'Planting Schedule» shown on Figure 45 and see if I could make anything out of the strange figure to the right of the Pleiades, particularly the peculiar flying bird object.

Again, there were many months of searching before I learned from Alfred Metraux of the Smithsonian Institute (in Volume I of Steward's

12 'Handbook of South American Indians', p. 361, 365) that an Arawak shaman considers his most important attribute to be the 'Yulo Bird.' It is his principal spirit (just as in Roman mythology the eagle is the •attribute' of Jupiter). He can dispatch his Yulo Bird to fly to the heavens, or to the underworld, or wherever is necessary, to gain secret information.

It is recorded that an Arawak shaman talking to a missionary pointed to a crane wading in the water, and explained that this was his Yulo Bird. Later, the shaman pointed to the evening sky, outlining the Yulo Bird by the stars, which the missionary recognized as the Pleiades (for the head), the Hyades (for the wings), and Orion's Belt (for the long legs, placed outside its spreading tail, as the bird flies).

The missionary recognized the wading crane as Tantalus Cristatus, which my ornithologist friend, Dr- Charles Sibley of Yale, says is a name that was in use more than a hundred years ago for a bird of the crane family.

I will not attempt here to go into the details of applying the SCC to the full sweep of the panel as shown in Figure 48. I will just state categorically that the SCC actually does coincide quite well with the panel, and that I have identified more than 200 of the spots of paint, made by the shaman on the rock face, with the positions of actual stars on the SCC. There are only a few spots where there are any deviations. Indeed, I am tremendously impressed with the accuracy of his observations and his recording of the full range of stars on the panel of paintings, but I must draw attention to the fact that the three lines which I have described as being the barrier for the sun at the winter solstice (Figure 46) have a corresponding three-line barrier at the left-hand end of the panel (Figure 48). This I interpret as signifying that not only that the shaman was familiar with the phenomena of both the summer and winter solstices, but that he had recorded them with commendable accuracy.

It seems to me that this extensive excursion into astronomy may have been regarded by the shaman as a secret of his shamanistic cult. Actually, he had sequestered these paintings on a rather inaccessible ledge of rock. Consequently, I have reexamined several hundred slides which we had brought from Cueva Coati, to search for additional astro­ nomical data. I recalled an oval shape with radiating lines which I had seen on the main cave overhang. I went over to check it and make some closeup photos to show details of the wall at the Eastern end of the Cueva Coati, as are given in Figure 49- My present inclination is to call the prominent ellipse with short radiating lines (Figure 50) a full moon with possible shadows that we would call ' the man in the moon,' but to which the Amerinds refer as 'the rabbit in the moon.'

I realized that there is a V-shaped figure above and to the left of the full moon (Figure 49) and I am willing to interpret this as the Hyades, since the star is also shown where Aldebaran ought to be.

13 Let us move to another rock, Figure 51, which to my thinking shows clearly the total eclipse of the sun; what the twenty reddish-brown dabs of paint might mean I have as yet no idea.

Another (Figure 52) turned out to be a source of real excitement. At the upper left corner is a large radiating star which I guess is Sirius, but the real surprise is the intriguing little figure of a dancing girl to the right of Sirius. Her right arm is bent to show a sprightly dance movement, and her left arm has three pointing fingers. Her legs are also bent in a vigorous dance movement. She is wearing a very short skirt with three or four pleats.

I was delighted to find that the figure fits our star map as shown in Figure 53 when placed on top of the constellations Hercules, Corona Borealis, Bootes, and Lyra. Corona Borealis outlines her head, Vega is the toe of her right leg. Other stars show the arms, and there is even a star in each pleat of her skirt. The fit seems perfect. Of course, the prominent Sirius at the left of the slide is a reminder to the shaman that the heliacal setting of Sirius is associated with the great festival of the sun god, for which he must make proper preparations.

I began this story by suggesting that I would analyze how the Arawak people regarded their art, their religion, and their astronomy. I will conclude by saying that I think their art seems to have been well developed as exemplified by the painting and sculpture of their ceramics and also in their cave paintings.

Their religion comprised the male deity Yocahu who gave them manioc, a food that allowed them to develop to a nation of some three million people, compared to the possible five million of the Spaniards, the world's most powerful nation at that time. So the Arawaks were by no means an insignificant tribe.

Also, a female deity, Atabeyra, evidently was a deity as important as Yocahu, because there seems to be just as many of her carved images, and some of them ranking as top quality works of the sculptors' skill; even some specimens ranking well with our most modern art.

The dog deity Opiel-Gua-Obiran is the third member of the Arawak Trinity and presumably was regarded quite intimately by the people since many small images of the dog exist. Several pieces suggest their use as personal jewels and amulets.

The Arawak progress in science was exemplified by their development of astronomy to a degree that compares favorably with that of the people who built Stonehenge, in that they had also determined the solstices and how to construct a 'calendar' to control their agriculture and their festivals. Although they illustrate a total eclipse of the sun, I see no evidence that they were able to predict the occurrence of an eclipse.

Ik I must confess to having developed a feeling of close personal consciousness of the Arawak shaman, who seems to have been their chief tribal counselor, their medicine man, the head of their intelligentsia, their calendar keeper, and indeed probably their chief administrator. I have named his many services to his tribe, but I feel that he has also bridged the long gap in time and opened my eyes to a much richer understanding of the more human aspects of these prehistoric people. The Arawaks were by no means 'a crude ignorant tribe.'

15 Figure 1. Work of the Painter Arawak. Typical white-on-red (W-O-R) of Saladoid pottery.

Figure 2. Work of the Painter Arawak. Typical white-on-red (W-O-R) of Saladoid pottery.

16 Figure 3. Work of the Sculptor Arawak; pot handle adorno, typical of Barrancoid pottery.

Figure 4. Work of the Sculptor Arawak; pot handle adorno, typical of Barrancoid pottery.

IT Figure 5. Complete bowl of the Painter Arawak.

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Figure 6. Complete bowl of the Sculptor Arawak.

18 Figure 7. Yocahu, the male deity - giver of manioc, Puerto Rico.

Figure 8. Yocahu frequently has a clear-cut male head.

19 Figure 9. Yocahu almost always has a conical back, like a volcano.

Figure 10. Several Yocahus with volcano peak backs.

20 Figure 11. Conch ïocahus from Indian Creek, Antigua.

Figure 12. Additional conch ïocahus from Guadeloupe.

21 Figure 13. Primitive Yocahu carved from prongs of conch.

Figure 14. Yocahu with sun rays - marker stone from Ball Court, Capa, Puerto Rico.

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Figure 15. Yocahu and L-shape stone marker, also from Capa, P.R.

Figure 16. Ceramic male Yocahu, Antigua.

23 Figure 17. Conch, Yocahu amulet, Montserrat.

Figure 18. Atabeyra, female deity, with emerging babe, Puerto Rico.

21» Figure iy. Atabeyra, oval squatting female deity, Haiti.

Figure 20. Atabeyra, as glyph on ball court marker at Capa.

25 Figure 21. Atabeyra, limestone, from Haiti cache.

Figure 22. Atabeyra stone sculpture; although only six inches high, it gives a feeling of being monumental.

26 Figure 23. Atabeyra, stone sculpture,, but quite abstract in form.

Figure 24. Dog deity head, stone, with Y-shape hole for sniffing narcotic powder; from Barbuda. 27 Figure 25. Dog deity complete animal, Haiti.

Figure 26. Dog deity shrine, Haiti, with Shaman's accoutrements.

28 Figure 27. Savannah land surrounding Cueva Coati.

Figure 28. The granite cave.

29 Figure 29. Huge roof slab of oave

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Figure 30. Close up of animal

30 Figure 31. Coati.

Figure 32. Group containing shaman.

31 Figure 33- Detail of shaman.

Figure 3^. Another picture of bird shaman showing the crocodile.

32 Figure 35. Copulating snakes.

Figure 36. Horseshoe crab.

33 Figure 37- Male and female symbols.

Figure 38. Hunter, perhaps with sling shot.

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Figure 39. Black hand.

Figure 40. Kit pointing to crosses.

35 Figure 41. José Cruxent thinks this is an extinct mammoth.

Figure 42. Lizard rock. Is this a sun figure at lower left corner.

36 Figure 43. The Sky God.

Figure 44. A confusing section, to right of 'Sky God.'

37 Figure 45. Two ovals, the Pleiades panel.

Figure 46. The Yulo Bird and the Solstice.

38 Figure 47. Orion's Belt.

Figure 48. Drawing of the whole panel.

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Figure 49. Eastern Wall of cave.

Figure 50. Full moon.

¡40 Figure 51. Eclipse of Sun.

Figure 52. The Dancing Girl.

lil Figure 53- Star map of Dancing Girl.

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