They didn't just find her...........but cave paintings............of wars between Indians and blacks..........

After reports of the existence of numerous cave paintings began surfacing in 1963, a survey was taken in 1970 of the Säo Raimundo Nonato region of Brazil. Follow up surveys in 1973 and 1975 turned up more than 100 decorated rock-shelters. Done mostly in red, yellow, black and white (with some gray), figures of deer, jaguars, armadillos, lizards, rheas, crabs, humans, trees, and various abstract signs have all been catalogued. Excavation of the sites was first initiated in 1978 by Brazilian archeologists from the Paulista Museum, lead by Niede Guidon of the University of Säo Paulo.

Today over 300 archeological sites have been discovered (most with rock art), captivating the interest of no less than 35 specialists in the fields of archaeology, geology, ecology, as well as other related disciplines. Säo Raimundo Nonato is described as lying "in one of the most beautiful and wild regions of South America." (Guidon, 1987) The natives call the region caat-inga, or "White Forest".

The region is littered with charcoal-containing hearths. "Charcoal samples from the hearths yielded a consistently ordered series of twelve carbon 14 dates that ranged from 32,000 to 17,000 years ago." (Ibid.) The most ancient dates were obtained from red marks found on chunks that fell from the rock walls, becoming embedded within layers dating from 32,000 to 27,000 years old. At another nearby cave, Toca do Sitio do Meio, artifacts dated from 15,000 to 12,000 years B.P. These discoveries alone illustrate that humans had been occuping South America at least as long as 32,000 years.