Credit: © The Royal Society
Image number: RS.10908
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Picture-writing of trees and geometrical patters
Date
1853-1854
Creator
Richard Spruce (1817 - 1893, British) , Explorer
Object type
Archive reference number
Material
Dimensions
height (drawing): 220mm
width (drawing): 133mm
width (drawing): 133mm
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
Content object
Description
Examples of picture-writing or pictograms found carved into rock at Jauarité Caxoeira, Rio Uaupés.
Reproduced as Figure 21 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 he copied these few rude figures on the rocks near the village of Jauarité. The figures seem to Spruce to represent various types of tree. The top two figures indicate a buttressed stem or aerial roots. The right hand figure below these is a tree with flowers or fruits on the terminal branches. The lowest middle figure is probably the very rudest symbol of a human form; while the remainder seem to Spruce to be merely fanciful geometrical patterns. Annotated by Spruce as '2/3 scale'.
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 21 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 he copied these few rude figures on the rocks near the village of Jauarité. The figures seem to Spruce to represent various types of tree. The top two figures indicate a buttressed stem or aerial roots. The right hand figure below these is a tree with flowers or fruits on the terminal branches. The lowest middle figure is probably the very rudest symbol of a human form; while the remainder seem to Spruce to be merely fanciful geometrical patterns. Annotated by Spruce as '2/3 scale'.
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