Gil Alessi, S\u00e3o Paulo, Madrid, 7 Sep 2018<\/p>\n
A recent fire has destroyed some of South America\u2019s oldest fossils, as well as irretrievable recordings of native languages no longer spoken<\/em><\/p>\n Among the ashes of Rio de Janeiro\u2019s National Museum are what has survived of its unique cache of fossils, ceramics and rare species. Before a fire swept through its collection of prized exhibits, the museum was home to around 20 million examples of natural history, including skeletons that harbor the answers to questions that haven\u2019t yet been answered \u2013 or in some cases even asked. The inferno may also have silenced forever the words and songs of indigenous peoples in languages that no one remembers anymore.<\/p>\n Three days after the fire, the full extent of the damage had still not been assessed<\/p>\n Three days after the fire, the full extent of the damage had still not been assessed. But both professors and students are pessimistic, with many facing the possibility that the object of their studies has gone up in smoke.<\/p>\n One of the main concerns is the potential damage done to the material taken from the archeological site Lagoa Santa, in the state of Minas Gerais, which is considered of fundamental importance to understanding the origin of prehistoric American communities. The largest assortment of this material in the world, it was the indisputable jewel in the museum\u2019s crown.<\/p>\n Labeled \u201cthe Luzia Group,\u201d in reference to the oldest skeleton ever found in America, which came to light in 1974 and dates back 11,500 years, its discovery paved the way for a series of hypotheses concerning the colonization of the continent. Studies carried out on Luzia\u2019s skull during the 1980s by Professor Walter Neves suggest that the first natives in America were possibly of African origin. As Luzia\u2019s features do not resemble the features of Brazilian indigenous people at the time of its discovery, experts came up with the theory of an initial migration to Brazil of peoples with African characteristics who would have crossed from Asia to America via the Bering Strait 14,000 years ago, followed by another wave of migrants with Asiatic features, such as those of the American Indians, around 12,000 years ago. The delicate cranium was kept inside a steel case and it is not yet known what has become of it.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are smaller collections of material excavated from Lagoa Santa in the S\u00e3o Paulo University, the Federal University of Minas Gerais and in Copenhagen but they don\u2019t amount to even half of what was here,\u201d says Mercedes Okumura, the coordinator at the Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies at S\u00e3o Paulo University, who worked in the museum\u2019s archives for four years. According to Okumura, the analysis that was being carried out on the skeletons and the research still waiting to be financed, such as the analysis of isotopes and the genome sequencing, could confirm the theory of the African migration to America.<\/p>\n There were also fossils lining the museum\u2019s passages suggesting that American Indians were direct descendants of the Polynesians. These were in the shape of around 40 nomadic Botocudo skeletons, a tribe that is now extinct. \u201cThis is material that no longer exists in any other museum in the world,\u201d says Okumura.<\/p>\n The fire may also have destroyed research related to one of Brazil\u2019s most peculiar communities: the Sambaquianos. These were an indigenous people who lived along the coast on top of mounds of shells and fish bones several meters high, called sambaquis, which also served as graves. Most of these sambaqui mounds have long since been removed and replaced by buildings. The museum, however, had an impressive collection of material relating to the Sambaquianos, such as skeletal remains, utensils and samples of the mounds themselves.<\/p>\n The silenced voices<\/strong><\/p>\n The archives also contained recordings of conversations, songs and rituals from dozens of indigenous tribes, many taped on old machines during the 1960s, and which had not yet been digitalized. Some contained extinct languages, long since forgotten.<\/p>\n \u201cWe hope that other institutions have recordings of these languages,\u201d says linguist Marilia Fac\u00f3 Soares, who works with the Tikuna tribe that make up the Brazilian Amazon\u2019s largest community. She thinks that some of her own work has been lost in the fire. \u201cI will have to repeat field work to fill in the gaps,\u201d she says. \u201cBut obviously, you can\u2019t recover the conversations of those already dead, generally the oldest members of the communities.\u201d<\/p>\n The museum also contained archives that were considered basic to the study of indigenous culture, such as those from Professor Roquette Pinto, who made the first known recordings of indigenous music with a phonograph in 1912; or the material from the German researcher Curt Nimuendaj\u00fa who traveled to hundreds of villages that encompassed most of the country\u2019s tribes in the first half of the 20th century, and who is considered the father of ethnology in Brazil. The museum kept the original negatives of his photographs, notes and other invaluable written material.<\/p>\n In the field of biology, the losses are incalculable, particularly in the area of invertebrates. \u201cWe had a hundred-year-old collection containing millions of different insects, among them thousands of type specimens that are the examples upon which the description of the entire species is based and which become the model [for each species], and they can\u2019t be replaced,\u201d says Ronaldo Fernandes, a professor associated with the museum\u2019s vertebrate department. \u201cIt\u2019s all been lost. The department that studies spiders, scorpions and ticks has been completely burned down.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Fernandes, the collection of Malacology \u2013 the study of molluscs \u2013 has been saved thanks to one of the professors who rescued 80% of the type specimens from the collection while the building was in flames.<\/p>\n Some researchers watched their work reduced to cinders live on TV. \u201cAll the professors\u2019 libraries have gone,\u201d says Luiz Dias Duarte, anthropologist and associate director of the museum. \u201cMy archives, the notes from my field work, registers and tapes gathered over 40 years of research in Brazil as well as those still in progress, have been lost. We had the best anthropological library in Brazil. It\u2019s all been reduced to ashes.\u201d<\/p>\n