AMAZONIA

CONTENTS

AMAZONIAYANOMAMIYUCUNASMISCELLANEOUS

FLOTTING VILLAGEGUARANI HOUSESBANDEIRISTA

0⁰ Equator

Amazonian Rainforest

Amazonia as delineated by the WWF

Amazonia covers

Brazil

Peru Colombia Venezuela Ecuador

Bolivia Guyana Suriname French Guiana

9Different countries

MASSIVE!!! How does 2,123,562 sq miles sound?!?!? That’s the equivalent of 140 keralas- pretty big, eh? SIZ

EIf the Amazon was a country it would be the 9th largest country on the planet (1.2 billion acres or 48 million football fields).

R.Amazon is the second longest river in the world and by far the largest by waterflow with an average discharge greater than the next seven largest rivers combined

The Mighty AMAZON RIVER

the Amazonia is made up of a mosaic of ecosystems and vegetation types including rainforests, seasonal forests, deciduous forests, flooded forests, and savannas

CLIMATOLOGY

hot and humid throughout the year, with an average annual temperature of 27°C (80.7°F)

rains almost the whole year

60-180 inches to 30-100 inches

Amazon rainforest is home to many strangest looking, largest and smallest, loudest and quietest, more dangerous and least frightening animals on Earth.

AMAZING A M A Z O N I A

MAMMELS

AVIANS

INSECTS  X 2.5 million

X 1294

X 427 

many more remaining to be discovered

X 2,200FISHES

REPTILES

AMPHIBIANS

X 428 

X 378 

many more remaining to be discovered

moreover 438,000 plant species

many more remaining to be discovered or catalogued

Dendrobates auratus

Hyla rhodopeplaDendrobates

galactonotusCruziohyla craspedopus

Agalychnis calidryas

Ocelot Tapir Two Toed Sloth Capybara Armadillo

Many rare birds inhabit the Amazon

Scarlet macaw (Ara macao), River Xingu, Amazonia

And also some dangerous animals.

VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE OF

A M A Z O N I A

Indigenous People

• There were an estimated ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest five centuries ago. Today there are less than 200,000.

• In Brazil alone, European colonists have destroyed more than 90 indigenous tribes since the 1900’s.

• With them have gone centuries of accumulated knowledge of the medicinal value of rainforest species.

Indigenous people * mother tongue Residence

yanomami Yanomaman languages Yanos/shabono

Yucuna yucuna Yukana Malocas

* This list is incomplete

YANOMAMI

The Yanomami are one of the largest relatively isolated tribes in South America. They live in the rainforests and mountains of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela.

0⁰ equator

The Yanomami believe strongly in equality among people. Each community is independent from others and they do not recognize ‘chiefs’. Decisions are made by consensus, frequently after long debates where everybody has a say.

Like most Amazonian tribes, tasks are divided between the sexes. Men hunt for game like peccary, tapir, deer and monkey, and often use curare (a plant extract) to poison their prey.

Although hunting accounts for only 10% of Yanomami food, amongst men it is considered the most prestigious of skills and meat is greatly valued by everyone.No hunter ever eats the meat that he has killed. Instead he shares it out among friends and family. In return, he will be given meat by another hunter.

LIFE STYLE

The Yanomami have a huge botanical knowledge and use about 500 plants for food, medicine, house building and other artefacts. They provide for themselves partly by hunting, gathering and fishing, but crops are also grown in large gardens cleared from the forest.

The Yanomami local groups are generally made up of a multifamily house in the shape of a cone or truncated cone called yanos

Some yanos can house up to 400 people. The central area is used for activities such as rituals, feasts and games.

Interior of the Yanomami maloca at night, Tootobi, Brazil

Yanos are built from raw materials from the jungle, such as leaves, vines, plums and tree trunks.

-They get heavy damage from rains, winds, and insects, so Yanos are usually rebuilt every 1 to 2 years.

After each family builds its own house, a common roof is built connecting all the individual houses together. Each family is responsible to build its own section of the common roof. This forms a circular donut-shaped village

To build the yanos the poles are put in place and secured in the ground and overhead. Then thousands of leaves are woven into the thatch. Permanent yanos are usually surrounded by palisades to protect themselves from possible attacks. The palisades are about 10 feet long and are made of logs from palm trees

The walls are held up withpoles and the village roof is made of thatch (dry leaves and branches)

so after a few years yanos rots and fills with insects and rodents. Then the Yanomamibuild a new village, sometimes next to the old one.Yanomami move every five years or so to find new land to grow food in.

YUCUNAS

An Amazonian Indian group who today number about one thousand people.

They live near Equator between 70°31’ and 71°31’ W and 0°45’ and 1° S, which is currently in the Comisaría Especial del Amazonas in Colombia

0⁰ equator

• They reside in a communal house called maloca• Maloca is a large structure which simultaneously serves as dwelling site, a temporary village for over one hundred people, a workplace, a temple, and a burial site. • Each maloca domestic community is an economically self sufficient unit with its own territories for shifting horticulture, hunting and fishing.

Exterior view of a maloca

Construction of maloca starts with autumn equinox

Maloca headman selects the site

The construction team starts clearing jungle and they do complete malocas in 2 months

weaving palm leaves onto one of the laths that forms the framework of the roof and holds the thatch.

Structure

•The plan of the maloca starts with the placing of the 4 central posts/poles 4m from each other

•Once installed four beams are wedged on top, upon which a clearstory opening will be based.

FLOOR ZONING OF MALOCA

MALOCA PROPORTION

The pattern and breadth of its path within each ,Maloca portray in a different manner the size, constitution, capacity of resource use.

•The astronomical orientation of the maloca is determined by the preferences for an east west axis for the openings on the gable roof which allows for a time keeping device within the malocas as the sun’s rays sweep its interior.

•The positions of each post, beam and pinnacle and doors are determined by a ritual orientation of space which is culturally determined by the dominant yukana classsifactory system and its semantic fields.

ASTRONOMICAL S Y M B O L I S M

Construction of maloca starts with autumn equinox

MALOCA AS A CALENDER

The December dry season rituals take place in the maloca’s northern side, the equinoctial ones in its centre, and the June wet season ones in the southern side, precisely in the part of the house which the sun illuminates at that time of the year.

The sun’s shafts in the yearly sweep illuminate not only the floor but different parts of the roof’s interior and posts and beams.

MALOCA AS A SYMBOLBUILDING ELEMENT

REPRESENTS

ROOF Male worlds of the ancestors, of music, of shamanism, of stars, and of high-flying birds

FLOORS Female forces of fertility, regeneration and death

SOUTHERN PART OF MALOCA

For close kin(jaguar side)

NORTHERN PART OF MALOCA

For allies (anaconda side)

AMAZONIAN FLOATINGVILLAGE 

• The Amazon Basin, the largest in the world, covers about 30% of South America.

• Amazonia is very sparsely populated. • There are scattered settlements inland,

but most of the population lives in a few larger cities on the banks of the Amazon River.

• Due to large variation in the water level of the river houses are built on the rafts along the river.

• The houses rise and fall with the water levels that change from seasonal flooding.

• Many houses are built together and they all together known as Floating village.

Amazonia Floating Village 

• Houses are almost made of materials gathered from the rainforest.

• Roofs are made up of woven palms.

• Walls of these houses are built from wood taken right from the Rainforest.

• The walls are only a few feet tall to let the breeze flow through.

Guarani Houses

• Sub tropical forest of Brazil & Nort East Argentina

• In Hot region with High humidity

• Scattered settlement,Villages

• Slender staffs,bamboo, plalm leaves, boards. Clay

• Walls build on stave frame inserted at corners & doorway

• 4 to 6 bamboo along the corners & 3 along central line

• Palm ribs & wiven mats for doors

Bandeirista (Sao Paulo)• Located in the high Tiete river

basin around the cities of Sao Paulo.

• They have white walls, very few openings and hipped roofs.

• Foundation – stone,• Plastered with clay mixed with

cow dung ( 10 – 15 cm)• Structure – Beams supported by

walls• Roof – Clay tiles• Windows – blinds inside , shutters

outside• Floor – Beaten Earth, Wood on

top• Furniture's-undecorated & odd

scale• Walls became Limestone's by

18th century• Appropriate to Landscape

http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/yanomami/wayoflife#actnowhttp://www.wausau.k12.wi.us/east/Student%20Files/Anthropology/Template%202/social.htmlhttp://www.unique-southamerica-travel-experience.com/amazon-rainforest-climate.html

Encyclopaedia Of Vernacular Architecture Of The World Volume3CAMBRIDGE – USA PublisherISBN 0521564220, 9780521564229

REFERENCES