Credit: © The Royal Society
Image number: RS.10906
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Picture-writing of a chief, animals and household goods
Date
6 January 1854
Creator
Richard Spruce (1817 - 1893, British) , Explorer
Object type
Archive reference number
Material
Dimensions
height (drawing): 223mm
width (drawing): 176mm
width (drawing): 176mm
Subject
Geography
> Exploration
Art & culture
> Archaeology
Politics & Government
> Political doctrines
> British Empire
Politics & Government
> Political doctrines
> British colonialism
> Exploration
Art & culture
> Archaeology
Politics & Government
> Political doctrines
> British Empire
Politics & Government
> Political doctrines
> British colonialism
Description
Figures of picture-writing or pictograms found carved into rock on the right bank of the River Casiquiari, a little above Caño de Calipo.
Reproduced as Figure 20 in Notes of a botanist on the Amazon & Andes: being records of travel on the Amazon and its tributaries, the Trombetas, Rio Negro, Uaupés, Casiquiari, Pacimoni, Huallaga, and Pastasa; as also to the cataracts of the Orinoco, along the eastern side of the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, and the shores of the Pacific, during the years 1849-1864 edited by Alfred Russel Wallace, volume II (London, 1908).
In the aforementioned work Spruce notes that the symbol of a chief is represented at 'H' with a four-footed animal, perhaps a dog on the left. The rest of the figures Spruce suggests are household goods of some kind.
Annotated by Spruce that 'the figures of this group occupied the same relative positions on the rock'.
Richard Spruce (1817-1893) British botanist was not a Fellow of the Royal Society. He spent some fifteen years studying and collecting in the Amazon of Brazil and the Andes of Peru and Ecuador between 1849 and 1864.
Spruce was already in South America when he was employed by a Kew Gardens-India Office project to secure seeds of the cinchona tree, whose bark yielded the antimalarial drug quinine. In 1860 he shipped around 100,000 dried seeds and over 600 young plants out of Ecuador. A year later, Ecuador adopted laws to protect its cinchona trees from mass exportation.
Reproduced as Figure 20 in Notes of a botanist on the Amazon & Andes: being records of travel on the Amazon and its tributaries, the Trombetas, Rio Negro, Uaupés, Casiquiari, Pacimoni, Huallaga, and Pastasa; as also to the cataracts of the Orinoco, along the eastern side of the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, and the shores of the Pacific, during the years 1849-1864 edited by Alfred Russel Wallace, volume II (London, 1908).
In the aforementioned work Spruce notes that the symbol of a chief is represented at 'H' with a four-footed animal, perhaps a dog on the left. The rest of the figures Spruce suggests are household goods of some kind.
Annotated by Spruce that 'the figures of this group occupied the same relative positions on the rock'.
Richard Spruce (1817-1893) British botanist was not a Fellow of the Royal Society. He spent some fifteen years studying and collecting in the Amazon of Brazil and the Andes of Peru and Ecuador between 1849 and 1864.
Spruce was already in South America when he was employed by a Kew Gardens-India Office project to secure seeds of the cinchona tree, whose bark yielded the antimalarial drug quinine. In 1860 he shipped around 100,000 dried seeds and over 600 young plants out of Ecuador. A year later, Ecuador adopted laws to protect its cinchona trees from mass exportation.
Associated place