Human faces sculpted into stone up to 2,000 years ago have appeared on a rocky outcropping along the Amazon River since water levels dropped to record lows in the region's worst drought in more than a century. Some rock carvings had been sighted before but now there is a greater variety that will help researchers establish their origins, archaeologist Jaime de Santana Oliveira said on Monday. A view of ancient stone carvings on a rocky point of the Amazon river that were exposed after water levels dropped to record lows during a drought in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil October 23, 2023. REUTERS/Suamy Beydoun One area shows smooth grooves in the rock thought to be where Indigenous inhabitants once sharpened their arrows and spears long before Europeans arrived. "The engravings...
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travelogues, travel articles and news from Brazil
The Amazon River fell to its lowest level in over a century on Monday at the heart of the Brazilian rainforest as a record drought upends the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and damages the jungle ecosystem. Rapidly drying tributaries to the mighty Amazon have left boats stranded, cutting off food and water supplies to remote villages, while high water temperatures are suspected of killing more than 100 endangered river dolphins. Boats and houseboats are seen stranded in a dry area of the Igarape do Taruma stream which flows into the Rio Negro river, as the water level at a major river port in Brazil's Amazon rainforest hit its lowest point in at least 121 years, in Manaus, Brazil, October 16. REUTERS/Bruno Kelly The port of Manaus, the region's most populous city, at th...
Read MoreSome 200 protesters gathered beneath Rio de Janeiro’s world-famous Sugarloaf Mountain to protest the ongoing construction of ziplines aimed at boosting tourism, alleging it will cause unacceptable impacts. The four steel lines will run 755 meters (almost 2,500 feet) over the forest between Sugarloaf and Urca Hill, and riders will reach speeds of 100 kph (62 mph). Inauguration is scheduled for the second half of this year, and an online petition to halt work has been signed by almost 11,000 people. A woman, center, holds a sign that reads in Portuguese "A paradise that cannot become a private enterprise," during a protest against the installation of a zip line on Sugar Loaf Mountain, an iconic of the city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sunday, March 26, 20...
Read MoreBrazil’s Carnival is back. Glittery and outrageous costumes were prepared again. Samba songs were ringing out ’til dawn at Rio de Janeiro’s sold-out parade grounds. Hundreds of raucous, roaming parties were flooding the streets. And working-class communities were buoyed, emotionally and economically, by the renewed revelry. Revelers participate in the "Gigantes da Lira" street block party in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sunday, Feb. 12, 2023. Merrymakers are taking to the streets for the open-air block parties, leading up to Carnival's official Feb. 17th opening. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo) The COVID-19 pandemic last year prompted Rio to delay Carnival by two months, and watered down some of the fun, which was attended mostly by locals. Brazil’s federal government expects 46 million p...
Read MoreAs Carnival approaches in Rio de Janeiro, members of a samba school perfect a minutely-tuned performance with dancers twirling in blue, red and white skirts and 40 drummers pounding the rhythm with gusto. There isn’t a single man in sight. This samba school, in Rio’s Madureira neighborhood, is the city’s first to be run by and for women. A member of the Turma da Paz de Madureira, or TPM, samba school plays a drum during a rehearsal in preparation for Rio's Carnival parade, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo) The community-tied music and dance clubs have always included women, most commonly as seamstresses and dancers. They’ve played the schools’ smaller instruments and Carnival queens lead processions in elaborate, sequined outfits. But ...
Read MoreRio de Janeiro's famously colorful Carnival celebration will return in full force this month and is expected to generate nearly $1 billion in business, an all-time high, following the pandemic-related restrictions of years past. The streets of Brazil's second largest city will again play host to the free and wildly hedonistic parties, known as blocos, while the traditional samba schools will parade through the city's Marques de Sapucai Sambadrome. With the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic seemingly behind, authorities expect the annual celebration to break records in the tourism and service sectors, offsetting some of the losses of the prior years. "We believe the economy will generate five billion reais ($971.55 million) during Carnival alone, a record," the president of the R...
Read MoreA fishing community in southern Brazil has an unusual ally: wild dolphins. Accounts of people and dolphins working together to hunt fish go back millennia, from the time of the Roman Empire near what is now southern France to 19th century Queensland, Australia. But while historians and storytellers have recounted the human point of view, it’s been impossible to confirm how the dolphins have benefited — or if they’ve been taken advantage of — before sonar and underwater microphones could track them underwater. In the seaside city of Laguna, scientists have, for the first time, used drones, underwater sound recordings and other tools to document how local people and dolphins coordinate actions and benefit from each other’s labor. The most successful humans and dolphins are skilled at ...
Read MoreNew study connecting extreme thunderstorms and tree deaths suggests the tropics will see more major blowdown events in a warming world Tropical forests are crucial for sucking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But they’re also subject to intense storms that can cause “windthrow” – the uprooting or breaking of trees. These downed trees decompose, potentially turning a forest from a carbon sink into a carbon source. Members of NGEE-Tropics visit what they named “Blowdown Gardens,” an area that experienced windthrow near one of their field sites in the Amazon. Photo Credit: Jeff Chambers/Berkeley Lab A new study finds that more extreme thunderstorms from climate change will likely cause a greater number of large windthrow events in the Amazon rainforest. This is one of the fe...
Read MoreOn a stormy evening in mid-November, a huge, abandoned cargo ship broke free of its moorings and slowly floated into the massive concrete bridge that carries cars across Brazil's Guanabara Bay to Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's navy said the 200-meter-long (660-ft.) Sao Luiz, a rust-spattered bulk carrier built in 1994, had been anchored in the bay for more than six years awaiting legal proceedings before it crashed into Latin America's longest over-water bridge. The navy said it was investigating. A general view of the Conceicao island, where some abandoned ships are placed, is seen in the Guanabara Bay in Niteroi, in Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil December 28, 2022. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares "The Sao Luiz is still in the Port of Rio today, with 50 tonnes of fuel oil in it," Sergio Ricardo,...
Read MoreEven in the most biodiverse rainforest of the world, the pirarucu, also known as arapaima, stands out. First, there is its mammoth size: It can weigh up to 200 kilos (440 pounds), by far the largest of 2,300 known fish species in the Amazon. It is found primarily in floodplain lakes across the Amazon basin, including the region of Medio Jurua. Second, the giant fish not so long ago nearly vanished from Jurua, as vessels swept the lakes with large nets. The illegal and unsustainable fishing left river and Indigenous communities struggling to catch their staple food. And it left pirarucu designated as threatened with extinction, unless trade in the fish is closely controlled by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Fishermen join boats...
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