1491_ New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus - Charles C. Mann [5]
The pile is known as Ibibate, at fifty-nine feet one of the tallest known forested mounds in the Beni. Erickson explained to me that the pieces of ceramic were probably intended to help build up and aerate the muddy soil for settlement and agriculture. But though this explanation makes sense on engineering grounds, he said, it doesn’t make the long-ago actions of the moundbuilders any less mysterious. The mounds cover such an enormous area that they seem unlikely to be the byproduct of waste. Monte Testaccio, the hill of broken pots southeast of Rome, was a garbage dump for the entire imperial city. Ibibate is larger than Monte Testaccio and but one of hundreds of similar mounds. Surely the Beni did not generate more waste than Rome—the ceramics in Ibibate, Erickson argues, indicate that large numbers of people, many of them skilled laborers, lived for a long time on these mounds, feasting and drinking exuberantly all the while. The number of potters necessary to make the heaps of crockery, the time required for labor, the number of people needed to provide food and shelter for the potters, the organization of large-scale destruction and burial—all of it is evidence, to Erickson’s way of thinking, that a thousand years ago the Beni was the site of a highly structured society, one that through archaeological investigation was just beginning to come into view.
Accompanying us that day were two Sirionó Indians, Chiro Cuéllar and his son-in-law Rafael. The two men were wiry, dark, and nearly beardless; walking beside them on the trail, I had noticed small nicks in their earlobes. Rafael, cheerful almost to bumptiousness, peppered the afternoon with comments; Chiro, a local figure of authority, smoked locally made “Marlboro” cigarettes and observed our progress with an expression of amused tolerance. They lived about a mile away, in a little village at the end of a long, rutted dirt road. We had driven there earlier in the day, parking in the shade of a tumbledown school and some old missionary buildings. The structures were clustered near the top of a small hill—another ancient mound. While Newell and I waited by the truck, Erickson and Balée went inside the school to obtain permission from Chiro and the other members of the village council to tramp around. Noticing that we were idle, a couple of Sirionó kids tried to persuade Newell and me to look at a young jaguar in a pen, and to give them money for this thrill. After a few minutes, Erickson and Balée emerged with the requisite permission—and two chaperones, Chiro and Rafael. Now, climbing up Ibibate, Chiro observed that I was standing by the devil tree. Keeping his expression deadpan, he suggested that I climb it. Up top, he said, I would find some delicious jungle fruit. “It will be like nothing you have experienced before,” he promised.
From the top of Ibibate we were able to see the surrounding savanna. Perhaps a quarter mile away, across a stretch of yellow, waist-high grass, was a straight line of trees—an ancient raised causeway, Erickson said. Otherwise the countryside was so flat that we could see for miles in every direction—or, rather, we could have seen for miles, if the air in some directions had not been filled with smoke.
Afterward I wondered about the relationship of our escorts to this place. Were the Sirionó like contemporary Italians living among the monuments of the Roman Empire? I asked Erickson and Balée that question during the drive back.
Their answer continued sporadically through the rest of the evening, as we rode to our lodgings in an unseasonable cold rain and then had dinner. In the 1970s, they said, most authorities would have answered my question about the Sirionó in one way. Today most would answer it in another, different