The native population

Patagonia, this far end of the South American funnel, is the area of the nothing else beyond. People of different personality and ethnic background, immigrants coming from up north, even from the Behring Straits that links America an Asia, and even recognizing the eventual role of navigation. Patagonia is an ethnically conservative area, where is still possible to find archaic, primitive, racial and cultural traits in hunters, fishermen and just roaming people.That Patagonian evolution took more than 10,000 yea. On the shores of the Magellan’s Strait the two predominant of physical and racial dominating traits. Those of the boating people (alacalufes and yámanas or yaganes) and the hunters in land , known as the Onas, in the Great Island of Tierra del Fuego (Land of fire) and the area of Ushuaia, and the Tehuelches or Patagonians in the continent, the area where we are now in the nowadays Chubut. In the Tierrra del Fuego archipelago the human being appears much later. He arrived sailing, in different means of navigation, but still today the influence of the Atlantic shores in the human settling, is scarcely known.

The Primitive Industries

Archeologists found in the northern seaboard of Patagonia elements of specific industries, pf primitive cultural origin (lower Paleolithic) but its existence is doubted in the southern seaboard. A number of utensils or artifacts made wit stone, bone or shell , made by man and left at campsites or workshops . Better known , but still now in a preliminary way are industries developed made by indigenous groups to the west , produced at a later period, (Paleolithic prior) in the ideal cultural progress.Excavations show the evolution of different industries in the extreme south, by the straits and in Central Patagonia , separated one from the other by thousand of years . Each, on it’s own show tendencies to a greater specialization needed in hunting the greater prey, such as the guanaco.

The character of Cultures

Given the nomadic character of the Patagonian cultures it has been futile the search of villages or buildings , and written words because writing didn’t exist as such in all of the Americas . or other cultural expressions related to the development of civilizations. Never the less there are stone constructions starting with modest semicircular shelters for temporary use by hunters , o grave mounds , in pyramid form, some time with a few meters in diameter and height , representing the religious beliefs of tehuelches or their ancestors. At the same time there is an abundance of paintings and drawings.

The Rupestrian Art

The prestigious rupestrian art of Patagonia , whose richest and better known expression is La Cueva de las Manos , in northern Santa Cruz, whose predominant element are hands, outlined or stamped in a style that rates as their oldest (some 10.000 years).In the same center south Patagonia area , characterized by the proliferation of hands paintings , the lean- tos and the caves in the ravines show the development of a scene style , with predominance of paintings of guanacos, with a realistic sense at the beginning and after increasingly deformed and, in a lesser number , ostriches, other animals and even the man himself. Perhaps related to the cultural development which would end in the historical tehuelches, later , around the early days of the Christian era, , appears a third style , drawings this time, , don preferably in rocky slabs and found in all Patagonia, known as the footprints because it aims to represent animal and human tracks , next to some other geometrical drawings . This other paintings , labyrinths , are related to the central idea of the Far Beyond, that’s to say the wellbeing , the evil and the paradise.The same applies t5o the grecas (guards) style , seen in all Patagonia , with geometrical rectilinear drawings , with predominance of labyrinths or related styles , so old as to go back to the Spanish Era , because in later drawings in the north of Patagonia . quite often appear human beings and even horses . In many regional museums it’s possible to see rictual stone objects , axes and slabs with drawings related to that style.

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