Cryptid on Phoenician - Tehuelche carving

 
A cryptid on a Tehuelche engraved stone with Phoenician symbols.
 
See Index on all my posts on Phoenicians in America.
 

Stone with an engraving of a Patagonian cryptid (and some Phoenician characters).
Is it a guanaco (left), wolf (center) or horse (right)? Copyright © 2011 by Austin Whittall

The strange "engraved stones" of Patagonia, which are unlike any other artistic expression of the Patagonian natives, besides having odd symbols that seem to be of Semitic (i.e. Phoenician or even Hebrew letters) origin, also depict animals. Some stones portray snakes (we will post on them separately, from a cryptozoological point of view) which I have already dealt with from a historical point of view (celtic or phoenician intertwined snakes)

The image shown above is form one of the stones from the Museo Salesiano at Rawson, Chubut, Argentina.

The stone, is a round boulder, which has several engravings. In its central part, a mammal, of unknown origin. Just above it, three symbols or letters. Above right an arrow head and below it, a geometric fringe or border with triangles.

This is not the usual native style, as already mentioned (Genuine Tehuelche inscribed stones), and all these "Phoenicians in Patagonia" posts aim at trying to validate if they are genuine, and if so, are they native or made by ancient Mediterranean mariners.

The Cryptid

The animal is shown sideways, only one fore leg and one back leg are depicted. It has a triangular shaped head with upright ears. Its legs are short in comparison to its body, and its tail is also short and bulky.

The local fauna, includes pumas (which as the engraving is definitively not a feline, we will discard), foxes (the animal seems dog-like), and guanacos.

I have included, just because the creature also has a horse-like air, an image of a Trapan (a rare Eurasian wild horse), officially there were no native horses in Patagonia until the arrival of the Europeans who brought horses with them to America, however I have posted elsewhere about the possible survival of prehistoric native American horses, so I decided to include one, just in case. (Also see: Patagonian donkeys)

I also included a wolf (nowadays there are no wolves in Patagona, and the maned wolf has long legs, so it is not the animal portrayed on the stone), because it may be a representation of an "Andean Wolf", another Patagonian cryptid.

In my opinion, the animal is some kind of canid. It may be an Andean Wolf, or even a variety of "warrah" (Falkland Islands / Malvinas fox-wolf).

The stone was apparently found in Chubut province, in the northern part of Patagonia. It is unusual for the Tehuelche to depict a dog. They usually painted guanaco or hunters, as well as pumas of feline looking animals. I have not seen any dog - wolf - fox in their rock paintings. So, this is indeed a very peculiar stone which differs from the standard native artistic expression.

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2011 International Year of Forests Copyright 2009-2011 by Austin Whittall © 

Two-headed Llama and Guanaco

 

British explorer George Chaworth Musters (who rode all the way from Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan to Carmen de Patagones on Patagonia's northern border in 1870), took note of the Tehuelche native beliefs and recorded a strange myth.

Two-headed Guanaco myth among the Tehuelche.

Musters wrote that:

"Another superstition is that a two-headed guanaco exists in the south, the appearance of which is forerunner of sickness".

He added that after the last time it was sighted, measles spread among the natives, killing many of them.

Guanaco belong to the Camelidae, which consists of a several species: two in the Old World (camels,in Africa and Asia) and another four members in South America, the New World camelids: llamas, alpacas, vicuñas and guanacos (the last two were never domesticated). Today we will look into myths regarding two-headed camelids in Southern South America. Some of these myths are found in Patagonia, others are from further north, mostly from the "land of the Inca", in northern Chile, Argentina, and of course, Peru and Bolivia.

As we have posted elsewhere (Cryptids - including two-headed snakes of Inca origin), the Inca had a strong influence on the other natives (they invaded Chile and Argentina, incorporating part of their territories into their empire in the XV^th century) and many of their myths were absorbed by the conquered people.

Despite this, I think that the remote Tehuelche, isolated in the Patagonian steppes were not subjected to this cultural influence, so the two-headed guanaco myth is most likely of pre-Inca origin.

The Pushmi-Pullyu

Perhaps the older readers will remember a 1967 film, Dr. Dolittle starring Rex Harrison and Samantha Eggar. In this movie, there was a pushmi-pullyu, an imaginary breed of llama, which was two headed.

Its name, which sounds Inca, is a pun (combining the English words "push me" and "pull you") about the difficulties the creature faces when walking, as both heads want to lead the way.

Movie still from Dr. Dolittle, 20th Century Fox, 1967.

Native two-headed llama in Chile.

The natives of Northern Chile (and this is well beyond Patagonia), in the Lasana Valley, in Antofagasta, depicted two-headed llamas in their rock-art. The following examples are from Pona (22°17'S, 68°38'W), they show these creatures (one of them apparently carrying a person):[2]

Two-headed llamas - Chile. From [2]

This mythical creature must have permeated into Chile from Peru, the home of the Inca people.

Qarqacha de Peruvian bicephalic llama.

Peruvians (in the Huancavelica region) believe in a similar monster, the Qarqacha or Jarjaria.

It gets its name from its strange laugh ("qar qar") -while "chas" means dirt. It is a human that has been punished by God for some evil sin (mainly incest) and at night morphs into a deformed llama (mostly two-headed) or some other bizarre beast.

Without any doubt, this monster myth is intended to frighten people to keep them on the "straight path" and avoid the temptation of incest in small communities.

Argentina's two headed camelids.

In Argentina, at the Peña Colorada site, in Antofagasta de la Sierra, Catamarca province, there are also representations of bicephalic llamas. These date back to the formative period (ca. 500 BC).

Two headed camelid - Argentina. From [4]

Bibliography.

[1] Musters, G. (1873). At home with the Patagonians. pp.192.
[2] Aballay Y., E. and Rojas V., J. El arte rupestre del valle de Lasana
[3] Cavero Carrasco, R., (1990). Incesto en los Andes: las "llamas demoníacas" como castigo sobrenatural. Ayacucho: CONCYTEC. pp 171
[4] Podesta, M., Rolandi, D., Raffinio, R., Proaño, M. (2005). El arte rupestre de Argentina indígena: Noroeste Grupo Abierto Communicaciones. Chapter: Pastores y Argicultores Tempranos. La diversidad en el arte. Fig.4.

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity  Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall © 

Patagonia - environment and cryptids

 

Some time ago I posted on cryptozoology (belief in monsters) and wrote about Patagonia's peculiar situation.

On one hand it is a very large surface of land with a small human population, it has a very large quantity of protected areas and National Parks in both Argentina and Chile, yet, it has also has...

suffered some great ecological changes since the early 1900s that may have altered the habitat of many cryptids that appear in the natives’ myths, making it less likely to find these creatures.
  a. Sheep farming led to overgrazing on the steppe and altered the land available to other grazers.
  b.It also led to the over-hunting of puma and condor (considered predators of sheep and lambs).
  c. Cattle and horses introduced by the natives in the 1700s altered the forest environment and pushed the local deer (Huemul and Pudu Pudu) into less favorable environments.
  d. Hunting by “sportsmen” and farmers have placed both local deer species close to extinction.
  e. Salmon and trout introduced into lakes and rivers have preyed on the local relict fish species reducing the Patagonian otter’s food source. Both endemic fish and otter are endangered.
  f. Beavers and European Red deer introduced into Patagonia have caused havoc in their habitat.
  g. Climate change and global warming affect the formation of glaciers and the downstream fertility due to lack of water.

I have already mentioned the impact caused by salmon and trout (sustainability of monsters). Today I will comment about the severe impact that sheep farming has had on the Guanaco.

Guancaco (Lama guanicoe) is a native variety of camelid - a mammal related to the Asian camels. It is about 1 - 1,2 m (3 to 4 ft.) tall and weighs about 90 kg (200 lb.). It is related to the other South American camelids (alpaca, vicuña and llama). Nowadays there are only some 546 thousand guanaco in Patagonia (1997 data), while at the beginning of the XX^th century there were seven million of them. At that time sheep farmers started to kill them arguing that they competed with their flocks for food. Current estimates indicate that before sheep were introduced into Patagonia, there may have been up to 22 million guanaco living on the steppe.[1]

From a peak of 22 million sheep in 1952, the size of the flocks has dropped constantly. Currently there are 10 million sheep in Patagonia, and overgrazing has seriously damaged the environment causing desertification on 30% of the steppe's surface. And this area grows at 3% per year. Natural causes such as Hudson Volcano's 1990 eruption worsen the impact on the steppe's vegetation.[2]

Nevertheless, there are some who are working to revert this serious problem.
Such as a NGO, Conservación Patagónica. (English site).

I am leaving for Patagonia now for a short vacation, I will resume my posts after Christmas.

Bibliography.

[1] De la Vega, S., Las Leyes de la Estepa.
[2] Giraudo, C., Villagra, E., Villar,m., and Easdale,M.,  Los sistemas de producción ovina en la región Patagonia.




Copyright 2009 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters