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Underground sanctuaries

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Created: Monday, 18 November 2013 14:39
Published: Monday, 18 November 2013 14:39
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Many caves in Myanmar are sacred places. They probably have always been, but since the Buddhist religion spread in Southeast Asia, the caves of Burma have become places of refuge for monks and hermits, and places of worship for the entire population. Traces of attendance for religious purposes can be found in almost all the more accessible caves . Some of them, including the well-known Pindaya, and others less known, like Myin-Ma-Hti near the town of Kalaw , have been adapted for this purpose, with ceramic flooring and internal lighting, and are full of votive stupas and statues representing the Buddha. The Pindaya cave , in particular, is one of the most important holy places for the Buddhist religion all around Asia and receives several hundred thousand visitors every year.
Their impact on the conditions of the cave, from the environmental point of view, is considerable , but the richness and socio-cultural importance of these place, frequented from thousands of years, is huge and it deserves the greatest attention to be conserved.

Ponte Colossale

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Created: Monday, 18 November 2013 14:39
Published: Monday, 18 November 2013 14:39
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The paintings of Tepelmeme’s Puente Colosal JuquilaIn the course of the 2002 Juquila expedition, a particularly significant example of the recurring association between karst environments and ancient human activities was observed. Inside Tepelmeme’s Colossal Bridge there are numerous cave paintings which show how the spectacular tunnel had repeatedly kindled the interest of the indigenous groups which lived in the area in Pre-Hispanic times. The paintings are also of excellent technical and aesthetic quality, to the point of being among the best examples of Mexican cave painting.
Traditionally known of by the local inhabitants, the Tepelmeme paintings have been adequately described in scientific literature only in the last few years. In the mid 1960s, they were observed by Ross Parmenter, who was also given a feline bone decorated with complex engravings by a local man who had found it in the tunnel. However, Parmenter’s report remained unpublished and only in the mid 1980’s was a better description of the paintings published by the archaeologist Carlos Rincón Mautner. Finally, in 2004, Javier Urcid carried out a detailed research project during which the paintings were surveyed and many archaeological remains were found, both inside the Puente Colosal and in its surroundingsJuquila. The results of these researches indicate that the first ancient traces at the Puente probably date back to the Archaic period (7000-2000 B.C.). It was however during the Late Classic period (6th -9th Centuries) that the majority of the Puente’s paintings were painted by ñuiñe groups, belonging to a cultural tradition typical of the Lower Mixteca and whose exact linguistic affiliation is still unknown. The Puente Colosal’s ñuiñe paintings consist mainly of calendar glyphs accompanied by numbers. In all likelihood they are calendar names (that is, the names which Mesoamericans adopted based on their day of birth) and their placement suggests that the different glyph groups should be interpreted as genealogical records. That is, as genealogical sequences which attest to the noble pedigree of some individuals. The most spectacular glyph group, for example, could be read as “1 Grass is son of 11 Rain, in his turn son of 10 Owl”. The heterogeneous stylistic characteristics of the ñuiñe paintings, like the many instances of overlapping, indicate that the paintings were executed at different times, the majority of which at the end of the Classic period, a time during which several settlements near the Puente Colosal were thrivingJuquila. Among the paintings not having a genealogical nature, the figure of a naked prisoner with tied arms and losing blood from his penis, stands out and alludes to the ‘fertilizing’ characteristic of sacrificing war prisoners. The later and less striking paintings are instead dated to the Early Postclassic (900-1250 A.D.), the era to which the previously mentioned engraved bone also belongs. The last Pre-Hispanic evidences at the Puente Colosal (Late Postclassic, 1250-1500 A.D.) are not paintings but turquoise mosaics pieces, small jade beads, copal fragments, and the remains of offerings placed inside the tunnel. According to local testimonies collected by Urcid, in the past some wooden masks covered with turquoise mosaics were found in the tunnel, unfortunately they were burned as they were considered the work of the Devil. The Puente Colosal’s paintings and offering remains indicate that ancient indigenous groups perceived that spectacular karst environment as a place having a sacred nature and being associated with the underground world of fertility and ancestors. As they did with most caves, the natives interacted with these cosmic environments through ritual behaviour, whose material residues are those which we can still observe today within the Puente Colosal. Torna al progetto

Auyan Tepui 2010

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Created: Monday, 18 November 2013 14:38
Published: Monday, 18 November 2013 14:38
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Auyan-Tepui 2010 A new expedition, in March 2010, completed the topographic survey and started the studies on the speleogenesis and the speleothemes of the Cueva Guacamaya, offering new ideas to the interpretation of the karstic phenomenon in the quartzite rocks. The cave, named Cueva Guacamaya, proved to be one of the most interesting cavities explored in that area, characterized by an abundance and variety of opal speleothemes never documented before on the Auyan Tepui. The prevailing horizontal trend along galleries controlled by an interlayer of iron oxides makes it more similar to the large system explored by Czech and Venezuelan speleologists in the Chimantha Tepui than to the caves of tectonic origin explored previously in the Auyan massif in the nearby Aonda zone.

Auyan Tepui 2014

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Created: Monday, 18 November 2013 14:38
Published: Monday, 18 November 2013 14:38
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In March 2014 was staged a new act of La Venta research project in the eastern sector of the Auyan Tepui, again in collaboration with the Theraposa Exploring Team and with the support of the National Institute of Parks (INPARQUES), that led to the discovery of a vast underground system of over 15 km of development, called Imawarì Yeuta. The 2014 was especially dedicated to the documentation and scientific research of this vast underground system that is currently the largest one in the world in the quartzites; but some new explorations have been carried out, too.
The participants, 18 Italians, 5 Venezuelan and one Mexican, were divided into two groups; one larger, that was mainly dedicated to the documentation work of the Imawarì system, and one smaller that, with a series of advanced camps, tried to find new systems in some areas just to the north. Despite the adverse weather conditions, with fog and rain everyday and the resulting problems for travelling by helicopter and settling the camps, the results have been remarkable on all fronts.
From the exploratory viewpoint, new branches have been detected in the Imawarì Yeuta cave, which now reaches 18.7 km, and have been found other two caves genetically related that, although separated by a deep subsidence, bring the system to a total development of about 20 km. In the sectors immediately to the north, where we hypotesized the existence of other large systems of horizontal caves, have been found for now only smaller caves, with the exception of the Cueva dell’Arco, discovered just a few days before the end of the expedition, that in a last exploratory trip of 36 hours has been mapped for almost 2,5 km and explored for at least another 600 m.
All the caves in this area are rich in very peculiar speleothemes, mainly composed of amorphous silica (opal) and gypsum, plus other minerals still under study. Also from a morphogenetical and speleogenetical point of view, the caves show environments by many ways extraordinary and of not clear interpretation, involving a rethinking of the processes of formation of the caves in the quartzites.
The documentation part has engaged a lot of people for several days, with both photographic and video teams, for a total of several thousand photographs and dozens of hours of video footage in high definition.
On the scientific side, have been performed chemical field analyses of the runoff and seepage waters, have been collected dozens of samples of water for further chemical and isotopic analyses, and the different speleothemes present have been studied.

Auyan Tepui 2013

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Created: Monday, 18 November 2013 14:38
Published: Monday, 18 November 2013 14:38
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After the ill-fated expedition in 2012, in February 2013, 15 days of relatively stable weather allowed a team of speleologists from La Venta and Theraphosa Exploring Teams, to settle a camp in the eastern sector of the Auyan Tepui, on the edge of a large depression that revealed some entrances at the foot of the internal walls. Actually, hitting on the right entrance among that chaos of gigantic blocks was not so easy but, once detected, it revealed an unexpected world.
A few days of exploration on a tight schedule made it possible to explore and document almost 20 km of galleries, 15 km topographed, belonging to a vast labyrinth of horizontal galleries and amazing environments over a hundred meters wide and only a few meters high. A system crossed by several collectors, some of considerable flow (connected by inactive galleries with several entrances).
But what impresses most about this cave, called Imawarì Yeuta - the "House of Gods" in the Pemon Kamarakoto language - is not its size, but the incredible variety of speleothemes, consisting mainly of amorphous silica (opal), gypsum and iron oxides. The scientific interest of these formations is huge, because they are related to very peculiar geological and microclimatical conditions, that may occur only in caves of very slow evolution (several millions of years). Furthermore, the discovery of this cave contributes to the understanding of the speleogenetical processes in the quartzites (quartz sandstone) that, until a few years ago, were based on speculative models not fully validated by analytical data and physical-chemical models.

Tepui 2012

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Created: Monday, 18 November 2013 14:38
Published: Monday, 18 November 2013 14:38
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A serious accident occurred to the helicopter that should carry the members of the expedition on the Auyan Tepui, together with critical weather conditions, forced us to give up the original plan, including the exploration of new caves on the Auyan Tepui. After several days spent in the attempt to adhere to the original schedule, the group decided to take a short survey on the Roraima Tepui, the only one reachable by land with two intense days of walking. During the few days left, in prohibitive weather conditions, are made some surveys to detect new possible caves and are carried out some geological studies, aimed at enriching the knowledge framework of the Tepui and of the alteration processes the quartzite rocks are subjected to in these particular environments.

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