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.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

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

New World Dogs and Homo erectus

 

Homo erectus and the first dog. Copyright © 2011 by Austin Whittall [*]

There is evidence at Zhoukoudian, China, that our ancestor Homo erectus shared its “time and space, food and shelter with wolves”[1] half a million years ago.

A similar association was found in Boxgrove, Kent, UK, (400,000 years ago) and in Lazeret, France (150,000 years ago).

All of these three sites predate modern men, and indicate that "archaic" forms of humans were capable of domesticating wolves. Note that wolves are not dogs, they are (Canis lupus variabilis), but this gives us an idea that “old” erectus and wolves lived side by side.

On the other hand, perhaps the bones found together are just a casual accumulation of remains and not proof that they lived together.

However, an article by Stanley Olsen [2] reports that “the genus Canis […] is reported from the Villafranchian (it spans a period from 3.6 to 1.2 Million years ago) or lower Pleistocene levels in North China at the archeological site of Chouchia-yu-fang.”, these may be a “small wolf or an early domestic dog (that is, a tame wolf)”.[2] This is long before modern men appeared on Earth.

Erectus and dogs

Regarding domestication of dogs, something which has been attributed to modern humans (H. sapiens), it is possible that wolves domesticated themselves, attracted by the food and shelter that small roving groups of hominids could have offered them.

Humans would also have benefited from this association as the tame wolves would have provided defense, an alarm system against predators or intruders and, food (in the form of pups).

Susan Crockford, a University of Victoria noted that dogs may have “undergone "self-domestication" from wolves more than once over history, which could explain why the animals appear and then seemingly disappear from the archaeological record”. [3]

So, it is probable that erectus domesticated wolves into dogs in Asia. But, what if they brought them with them into America, or, domesticated local American breeds into their own variety of dogs?

In previous posts I have mentioned the mysterious Falkland Islands warrah, a mammal that lived on those isolated islands, hundreds of kilometers from the continent, and nobody know how they got there.

At one time it was believed that they reached the islands on some native canoe, but, as we will see below that option is not possible. Alternatively they could have walked across the continental shelf when the sea levels were lower during the Ice Ages.

A recent study of their mtDNA [4], has given us a timeline for this strange wolf: the time of the most recent common ancestor (tMRCA) for the Falkland Islands wolf is 330,000 years, while its 95% HPD (Highest Posterior Density) is between 70,000 and 640,000 years respectively. [4]

The study notes that though “the maned wolf is the closest extant relative of the Falklands wolf, a morphologically similar species, Dusicyon avus, survived in South America until the mid-Holocene [7]. This species may have an even closer relationship with the Falklands wolf” [4]

However, as the researchers assume that modern humans appeared in America not earlier than 15 to 20,000 years ago, they conclude that “ a human-mediated origin of the Falklands wolf is unlikely” [4] and give it a natural origin.

So, considering their peculiar features, I wonder if it could have been "mediated" by H. erectus before the arrival of modern man in America?

The timeline fits a plausible time range for erectus to have selectively bred the warrah from maned wolf stock. The divergence age corroborates this. Perhaps they worked with the now extinct Dusicyon Avus or even the mysterious cryptid, the Andean Wolf.

Sources.

[1] Mark Derr, (2004). Dog's best friend: annals of the dog-human relationship. Univ. of Chicago Press. pp. 19.
[2] Olsen, Stanley. J. & Olsen, John.W., (1977). The Chinese wolf ancestor of new world dogs. Science, 197: 533-535. Aug. 5, 1977.
[3] Jennifer Viegas, (2008).World's first dog lived 31,700 years ago, ate big . Online.
[4] Slater G.J., Thalmann O., Leonard J.A., Schweizer R.M., Koepfli K.-P., Pollinger J.P., Rawlence N.J., (...), Wayne R.K., (2009). Evolutionary history of the Falklands wolf Current Biology, 19 (20).
[*] Cartoon by Austin Whittall, derived from two Online Cartoons (See them here and here).

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

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

Maned Wolf (Aguará Guazú) in Patagonia

 

Maned Wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus ). From the Internet

In previous posts on the Falkland Island wolf, possible Patagonian wolves and the Water Tiger I mentioned the Maned Wolf or Aguará Guazú, whose image is shown above. Today I will give some more details on this stange canid, related of course to cryptozoology in Patagonia.

Current status of the Aguará Guazú

The animal which is South America's largest Canid, was once widely distributed in the continent from the north of Brazil to Uruguay, including Paraguay, Bolivia and Central Argentina. Nowadays it is restricted to central and eastern Brazil, north of Argentina, central Paraguay, and is only found in very small numbers in Bolivia and Uruguay.

It is about 1 meter (3.3 ft.) tall and 1,30 m long (4.2 ft.). It has a reddish coat and a fox-like appearance (like a long-legged red fox). These long legs may have originated as the animal adapted to an environment with tall grasses, as can be found in the wetlands of Southern South America.

It has a sharp dark snout and a mane (hence its name) of black hairs from its head to its shoulders. The mane stands upright when the animal is alarmed. Its red color is interrupted by white areas on the tip of its tail, the inside of its upright ears and its throat. It is omnivorous and eats fruits as well as small animals.

Endangered, it is protected in Argentina and Brazil (where road kills are the most common cause of death). Its environment being encroached by man, is also a threat to its long term survival. Some 24,000 animals survive in the wild and it is listed on CITES "Red List" as Near Threatened.

Did they live in Patagonia?

There has been some debate about this and a lot of inconclusive evidence. Lets go over it:

1. Musters (1870). This English explorer rode from Punta Arenas by the Strait of Magellan all the way to Carmen de Patagones, on the Negro River, with a group of Tehuelche natives (his journal is a very interesting account of their way of life). I marked his itinerary with a blue line and with the number "1" in the map below.

Musters had been told about the "water tiger" and trying to find some animal that could account for it, after discarding the puma and the jaguar, he also discarded the aguará guazú, because, having seen a hide of one of them in Carmen de Patagones at the end of his journey, he was told by the natives that its habitat did not extend into Patagonia.[5]

2. De la Cruz (1806). Who crossed Patagonia in from Concepción in Chile, to Buenos Aires in Argentina. His route is shown in the map "2" with a blue line. He recorded that in Neuquén the native Peguenches [sic] told him that “there are other animals they call oop, whose body is shaped like a dog, which it resembles with its head, snout, legs and tail and with the ears of a cow; they state that the wool that covers it is like that of a sheep, a span or more in length, very soft and of a bright yellow color”.[6] It was named after its high-pitched yell.

Map showing current and past distribution of the Maned Wolf in Argentina. Adapted from [4]

As the photograph above shows, "oop" and maned wolf are both dog-like. However its ears are not cow like (click to see cow ears image). Its mane is long and it has a dense fur, but these are not "a span or more" in length (9 in. or 22 cm).

3. The Natives. Apparently the “Northern Tehuelche” had a specific word to name the aguará guazú. This word was “huica. [1]

I found a reference that states that the “Araucano” (apparently Mapuche or Araucanized Tehuelches - Puelches) called it “guequen” [2].

However, Ernest Moesbach who included the word in his dictionary, does not indicate that it was the name of the maned wolf, he placed it under the following entry:

Guaquén (Huaquén) Guaqui: huaquen
huaqueñ: meter mucha gritería, haber ruido continuo; ladrar del zorro. [3]

Which, translated from Spanish, means: "shout a lot, a continuous noise; the bark of a fox".

Comments.

Moesbach's dictionary seems to imply that the "quequen" was not a maned wolf, but a variety of fox.

There is strong evidence of the animal having lived close to Patagonia's northern reaches in some wetlands (now dissecated) in Mendoza, La Pampa and San Luis provinces along the now intermitent (due to water usage upstream for irrigation) Chadileuvú - Salado - Curacó river system. Also it had been reported in Buenos Aires province in the XVIII^th century. But there is no fossil or physical evidence that the animal ever lived in Patagonia or in Chile.

Though there is a "Northern Tehuelche" word for it, there is no equivalente Aonikenk word, meaning it was not found south of Río Negro. Furthermore, these "Northern Tehuelche" had expanded outside of Patagonia into the Pampas where, as mentioned above, there were aguaras. The Mapuche word as used in Argentina may have also come from this source as there was a great cultural flow between Tehuelche and Mapuche in this region the former adopting the Mapuche language and the latter embracing many Tehuelche beliefs.

There was probably some other canids in the area, the above mentioned "Andean Wolf" or perhaps some distant relative of the "Falkland Islands Wolf - Fox", but in my opinion, there were no Maned Wolves in Patagonia.

Bibliography.

[1] Friedrich Hunziker, Félix Faustino Outes, (1928). Vocabulario y franseario genakenn (puelche). Coni. pp. 280.
[2] José M. Suárez García, (1940) Historia del partido de Lobería. Talleres Graf. San Pablo. vol 1.
[3] Ernesto Wilhelm de Moesbach, (1944). Voz de Arauco: explicación de los nombres indígenas de Chile. pp. 98
[4] Sistema de Información sobre Biodiversidad
[5] Musters, G., (2007). Vida entre los Patagones: un año de excursiones desde el estrecho de Magallanes hasta el río Negro: 1869-1870. B. Aires: Continente-Pax. pp. 104 and ff.
[6] De la Cruz, L. (1835). Descripción de la naturaleza de los terrenos que se comprenden en los Andes, poseídos por los peguenche... B. Aires: Imprenta del Estado. pp. 25-26.

Further reading: Canids.org.

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

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