Bolas - stone balls around the World: Oldowan / Acheulean tools?

In my previous post I mentioned the stone balls, or "bolas" found in Miramar, Argentina, originally claimed to be 2 or even 3 million years old in the early 1900s, they are now believed to be either a hoax, or later, Paleoindian tools. However, genuinre and uncontroversial stone balls h ave been unearthed in the Old World, dating back to Oldowan and Acheulean times, meaning that they are around 1.5 million years old, and were made by Homo erectus or even older ancestral hominins.

Red Crag Stone from Bramford, England

Pictured below, (Red Crag stone. Source) this stone is not a sphere, instead it has an elongated shape, and unlike the other Old World finds, it has been quite controversial.

J. Reid Moir wrote an article about the stone three years after it was found by one of his assistants, by the name of John Baxter. It came from Pliocene sediments at Red Crag, Bramford, a site near Ipswich, in England, UK. The 1929 article titled "A Remarkable Object from Beneath the Red Crag". It was roughly egg shaped. Henri Breuil, who was a witness of the discovery wrote: "While I was staying in Ipswich with my friend J. Reid Moir, we were examining together a drawer of objects from the base of the Red Crag at Bramford, when J. Reid Moir showed me a singular egg-shaped object, which had been picked up on account of its unusual shape. Even at first sight it appeared to me to present artificial striations and facets, and I therefore examined it more closely with a mineralogist's lens. This examination showed me that." Rather than a South American bola, this ovoid was thought to be a sling stone like the ones used in "New Caledonia". TWhe Pleistocene to Eocene sediments at Bramfored are over 2 million years old.

However, Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews, 2011 warns that even thouth the age is correct, the setting may be wront: "the Red Crag deposits date from the Gelasian chrono-stratigraphic phase, 2,588,000 to 1,806,000 years ago during the earliest phase of the Lower Pleistocene, when this part of Britain was under a shallow sea, and it seems most likely that the “sling-stone” is a simple case of misidentification, its natural grooves being mistaken for human manufacture by an expert who was overtaken by his colleague’s enthusiasm for finding objects in the deposit in question."

Below is a Melanesian Sling stone , the resemblance is striking, yet this one is evidently manmade, and polished.

Sling stone from New Caledonia. Source

Olduvai stone balls, Tanzania

The Museum of Stone Tools shows the following image captioned as a quartzite spheroid from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, age: Early Pleistocene Oldowan-Acheulean 0.4 to 1.9 million years ago.

Another example can be seen here, online, at the British Museum, which in its description cautions, that although Louis Leakey suggested that these rounded stones were used as bolas, like the throwing stones from the Pampas, "experiments have shown that such pieces can be produced by repeatedly using the same quartz pebble as a knapping hammer"

The Oldowan tools, are crude, like struck pebbles, and believed to be the work of Homo habilis, manufacturing spheroidal stone balls seems to be beyond their cognitive abilities. Could primitive hominins like them fashion sinew cords or treat leather adequatly to be able to fasten them to stone balls like the bolas or boleadoras of the Pampas?

An excellent summary of the Olduvai spheroids can be found in Ignacio de la Torre & Rafael Mora, 2010, which I summarize below:

Clark reported them in 1955, and their deliberate manufacture by flaking and battering to shape the speroids. He suggested they were used as missiles, and also as hammerstones for stone tool manufacture and to crack nuts open.

Willoughby proposed in 1987 that they were the result of flaking that began with the typical choppers, and that ended up as speroids, or, altermtively that they were used as hammers, an unintentional outcome of their use was the shaping of rounded spheroids.

Texier and Roche (1995) consider them as deliberate objects that arose from a method of knapping flakes. A core is battered, through controlled reduction to produce flakes and this results in a polyhedron, or a spheroid.

Java stone balls made by H. erectus

Leaving Africa, and the Oldowan, stone balls were found in sites associated to Homo erectus, who has been in Eurasia for around two million years. Weidenreich, 1943 describes in Indonesia at the Homo erectus site in Solo: "The most interesting specimen illustrated by Oppenoorth is a stone ball from Ngandong. Similar stone balls have been found at several places in our excavations in the Solo Valley. They are made of andesite, are perfectly round, and are never polished. According to Oppenoorth, their diameters range from 67 to 92 mm... [2.6 - 3.6 in], and some may be even a little larger. They closely resemble primitive stone cannon balls as used in Java in medieval times for the old bronze cannons. They occur so regularly in the layers that they might actually represent "implements" used by Solo men." He attributes them a Mousterian, and therefore Neanderthal similarity, citing similar stones found in La Quina, France, Techik Tach, Russia. Adding that "Mousterio-Levalloisian of Florisbad, South Africa, Dreyer and Lyle mention "dozens of round balls" about 3 inches in diameter made mostly of dolorite, and also a few of blue shales." Weidenreich mentions that the oldest balls were Acheulean, from Kenya, reported by Leakey, who found them "in many cases in groups of three strongly indicating the use of the bolas, still used as a hunting weapon in South." Weidenreich suggests that although their purpose is unknown they were either sling stones or bolas.

According to Bartstra (1983), cited in van Heteren & de Vos, 2012 describes tools and remains found at the Ngebung site in Java, belonging to H. erectus there are three levels, the deepest (lowest) has tools that are absent in the upper ones of Upper Pleistocene age: "elongated choppers, spherical balls (so called sling stones or bolas) and crude axes, all made of andesite. The larger stone tools, like the bolas are considered to be Upper Pleistocene/Lower Holocene of age." No explanation given for assigning a more recent age to the bolas.

Acheulean bolas in Israel

My own research into these primitive bolas has revealed other sources, for instance, outside of Africa, made by Homo erectus in Ubeidiya, Israel, with an age of 1.4 million yearws, as reported by Muller et al., 2023 with a clear spherical shape. The paper suggests that they were deliberately fashioned that way, to resemble speheres and its title echoes that suggestion: The limestone spheroids of ‘Ubeidiya: intentionalimposition of symmetric geometry by early hominins? Some of the stone balls studied in this paper are pictured below:

This article points out that their shape has bewildered archaeologists, as they can't understand what was their use. Furthermore, they have been used for millions of years, starting with the crude Oldowan stones industry, and into the Acheulean, and Mousterian, their use in Southern South America persisted until the late 1800s. Their widespread geographic dispersion, from Africa, to Asia, Europe, and America is notable.

There are two schools of though about these balls: (1) that they were the byproduct of a flake producing technique that left spheroids as waste, a totally unintentional production of stone balls. (2) That the hominins that made them selected a nodule and then deliberately fashioned it into a polyhedron, and gradually into a spheroid or bola. The balls found in Israel, according to the authors , "are a complex formal technology that represent a manifestation of the complex cognitive and skilful capacities of Early Acheulean hominins. If similar intentional shaping can be demonstrated on Oldowan spheroids, this would likely represent the earliest evidence of hominins imposing a desired symmetrical geometry on their tools." In other words, Homo habilis and Homo erectus were much smarter than we imagined.

Ancient or Modern?

S. J. de Laet mentions stone balls in the History of Humanity Volume I (see p. 454) in line with what I have mentioned further, up, but he questions their antiquity in Indonesia, suggesting a modern Homo sapiens origin:

"round stone balls (resembling small stone cannon-balls) that are allegedly found in terrace sediments along the Solo. They are made of andesite, are not polished and measure on average 10 cm in diameter. They are associated with Homo soloensis(on account of their assumed stratigraphical position), and they are regarded as a primitive hunting weapon, which is why these stone balls are oftenreferred to as bolas or sling-stones. Von Koenigswald even saw in them evidence for theNeanderthal character of the Solo hominids: similar stone balls do occur at such famousNeanderthal sites as La Quina (France) and Teshik-Tash (Uzbekistan) (von Koenigswald,1951). In Sangiran too these stone balls are found (and they are displayed in the local museum); but around the hill of Ngebung it can be demonstrated that they certainly do not lie buried in high-terrace sediments. In Ngebung the stone balls can be associated with young, post-Pleistocene alluvial deposits (Bartstra, 1985). The question therefore ariseswhether the stone balls found along the Solo do not in fact originate also from recent sediments, and reflect the activities of Holocene hunters rather than those of ancient Homo soloensis"

Spheres with symbolic purposes

There are some intriguing rounded stone ballls that were discovered in a site known as El Guettar, in Tunisia, first explored by Gruet in 1954) (S. J. de Laet, see p. 352). The stones were found, accomodated in the shape of a cairn!

"El Guettar did yield the best evidence for symbolic behaviour in the constructed heap of stone balls (Gruet,1954, pp. 67–77). The site had some 7 m [23 ft.]of Middle Palaeolithic deposits around a spring, and the stone heap was found near the base of the sequence, built on a flat surface by the edge of the spring pool. The heap was conical, with a basal diameter of about 130 cm [4.2 ft] and a height of about 70 cm [2.3 ft.], and was built of about sixty balls, almost all of them oflimestone, which were graded from large (18 cm in diameter [3.1 in]), rather roughly shaped one sat the base to small (4.5 cm in diameter [1.8 in]), perfectly shaped ones at the top. The interior of the cone was filled with a mass of bones and flaked stone artefacts (approximately 2,000 ofthe latter, including a typical tanged point). The bones and artefacts seemed to have been simply gathered up from the surrounding surface (they do not differ overall from those found elsewhere in the excavation), but some care was taken to reserve the finest artefacts for the upper part of the fill. At the base of the interior of the heap were two thin plaques of a non-local limestone.The detectable method and consistency in the construction of the heap suggest that it was built on one occasion, rather than over a period of time. That the heap stood undisturbed thereafter until it became buried indicates that it was not just a convenient way of storing stone balls. The excavator believed that it represented an offering to the genius loci of the spring. Practical explanations have not been forthcoming and we too are brought to conclude that its purpose must have been symbolic."

I must add that Gruet believed the site was of people with a Mousterian culture, i.e. Neanderthals, however other scholars, like Clark, consider it to be later, belonging to the more recent Aterian culture, of modern Homo sapiens and about 40 ky old.

Below is a picture of the stone cairn at El Guettar

Cairn found at Guettar. Source

Hammers?

A recent article by Assaf, Preysler, and Bruner, 2023 analyzes the shape, size and flaking used to fashion them and concludes that "Based on the current data available, we link the development of SSBs [shaped stone balls] with an increased consumption and extraction of fat of large-medium sized herbivores in the Lower Paleolithic period. Indeed, SSBs may also have been used as percussion tools for processing vegetal material, perhaps similarly to handaxes, which were primarily used for butchering, but were occasionally used for woodworking. However, current functional and experimental data associate these items with marrow extraction activities, as well as some contextual data linking these items with faunal remains. We thus argue that these are designated tools shaped in a complex procedure—a technological solution invented during the LP in order to respond to the growing need for fat consumption."

Closing Comments

The use of stone balls is ancient, dating back to the first stone tools used by our ancestors in Africa. They survived across species (H. erectus, Neanderthals, and modern humans), and vast distances. They ended up in America where they were used for tens of thousands of years in the Pampas and Patagonia.

Were they introduced into the New World by H. erectus? and if so, is their great antiquity (as suggested by Ameghino at Miramar) could be an indication of that origin.

Finally, the Patagonian myth of Tachwull, them proto-human maker of bolas may be a memory of the presence of erectus in America.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Tierra del Fuego and its peopling - The Hudson Volcano event 7,750 BP

When looking back at the Patagonian natives, one imagines that they lived in a period of stability over the 15,000 years that they reigned supreme in southern South America until the arrival of the Europeans (explorers, navigators, conquistadors, missionaries, soldiers, slave hunters, sealers, settlers, etc.)

European discovery brought diseases that were deadly to the Patagonians. Measles, the flu, smallpox, wiped out 90 to 95% of the American Natives in the century that followed discovery in 1492. Patagonia though isolated also suffered.

Scourges like alcohol, Spanish "malocas" hunting natives to enslave them to work in Chilean mines also hit the Patagonains.

But in the past, these natives also suffered from natural disasters.

Early Arrival of Humans to Tierra del Fuego

The dates have been slowly moving further back, accepting older dates. Now it is accepted that the first hunter-gatherers settled on the northern tip of Tierra del Fuego around 11,000 years ago. The site at Tres Arroyos has dates ranging from 11,880 to 10,600 BP. In those days the sea level was far lower, and the Strait of Magellan hadn't flooded. The Island was linked to the mainland.

Tierra del Fuego during the Last Ice Age (notice current and past coastlines). Source.

Fuegians hunted the Amerian horse, mylodon sloths, the guanaco, and a dog species (Dusicyon avus), among other prey. They also lived on the now submerged continental shelf. Later, around 9,240 years ago, the glaciers melted, retreated, and sea levels rose confining them on the Island.

Different studies have found hints that these people and their culture changed over the millennia, suggesting extinction, and repopulation events.

One paper published in Science magazine (Source) found that natives using canoes along the Pacific Ocean in what is now Chile, didn't advance further south than 32° S. Between 13,000 and 8,500 years ago, they kept north of this latitude. The first seafaring Fuegians in Southern Patagonia (52°S) are those whose remains were found at Punta Santa Ana, Chile, dated at 7,440 cal BP.

These people discovered navigation on their own, adapting from terrestrial hunter-gatherers to maritime people. They exploited terrestrial resources and used the trees in the area (at that time) to build their canoes.

But what moved landlubber natives to become seafaring ones?

Volcanic Eruption and a move to the sea

There was a catastrophic event that can be followed by the use of green obsidian, a sharp volcanic glass used in stone tools. This material is believed to have come from Otway Sound in Chile. It was common and traded widely by the terrestrial natives between 9,500 and 7,700 BP, and has been found at ancient sites in Pali Aike and Fell Cave, 200 km distant from Otway Sound. But then, after 7,700 it vanishes. Obsidian from Otway and other sites abruptly disappeared from the Patagonian sites.

The natives were affected by the eruption of Hudson volcano, located in Chile (46°S - see it in Google maps) This eruption known as H1 took place around 7,750 years ago. It spewed forth 18 km³ (4.3 cu. mi.) of tephra, and covered most of Southern Patagonia with a thick layer of volcanic ash that ranged from 4 cm (1.5 in.) in Otway to more than 20 cm (8 in.) in Tierra del Fuego.

The ash destroyed the plants, grasslands and the animals that fed on them. The human food-chain was disrupeted. The paper reports that the eruption "may have actually extinguished this culture completely. However, it was unlikely to have affected marine species. We propose that this volcanic eruption was a significant trigger to the development of the maritime population from the older terrestrial hunter–gatherers."

A 2020 paper published in Nature, agrees, stating that around 6,700 BP there was a move to the sea with the adoption of canoes and harpoons and the settlement of the shores of the islands of the region.

It too noted that green obidian was no longer used and suggests it reflects " a loss of cultural knowledge about the location of the source of this raw material, potentially due to arrival of new people unfamiliar with the landscape." A population that replaced the older one. It also noted that the tools used changed with the introduction of "large bifacial lithic projectile points of different materials" in a later period (from 5,500 to 3,100 BP).

Two thousand years ago there was another change. The boleadoras (stone spheres seathed in hide and strapped to leather ropes used as throwing weapons to tangle the legs of animals like guanacos and rheas) were dropped and replaced with spears. Stone projectiles adopted different shapes: pedunculated around 2,000 BP. Even smaller ones were used around 900 BP suggesting the appearance of the bow and arrow.

The authors support the notion that the seafaring know-how was developed and invented it locally in Tierra del Fuego and not to a large-scale immigration into the region. Later around 5,500 BP there was an inflow of people from the northwest that replaced the Punta Santa Ana people. They are responsible for the change in stone tools (biface). Then, around 4,700 to 2,000 BP another wave brought the bow and arrow, and the languages spoken in North, Central, and South Patagonia (Tehuelche, Selk'nam, Aoniken, Teushen).

A 2022 paper describes the catastrophic H1 Hudson volcano eruption. It was about 5 times worse than the 1991 Hudson eruption that blew 3-4 km³ of ash (0.84 cu. mi.) and eighteen times greater than the 1980 Mount St Helen's eruption (1 km³ or 0.24 cu. mi.) St Helen's was equivalent to 27,000 Hiroshima atom bonmbs. Below is a map from this paper:

Deposits of tephra thicknesses (cm) in bold numbers. Source.

The author, Franklin, states that "the 7750-Hudson volcano is suspected to ‘have killed all the terrestrial hunter-gatherer population on Tierra del Fuego, which had been isolated since the opening of the Strait of Magellan at ~9240 cal YBP, since no evidence occurs for their existence until more than 1000 years after [its] eruption’ and ‘… it may have devastated for an extended time period the flora and fauna supporting the local terrestrial hunter-gatherers in this area, particularly in Tierra del Fuego …’"

The author adds that humans recolonized the island of Tierra del Fuego between 7,440 and 6,700 BP. They used bark canoes which were resilient, large and safe for open ocean navigation. Tree trunk canoes were unstable and difficult to maneouver, and coracle-like rafts used by Aonikenk Tehuelche in Patagonia were not seaworthy enough to cross the Strait of Magellan.

Franklin says that all large animals died out in Tierra del Fuego, a few rodents and lizards survived underground. The natives when they returned brought the Guanaco and fox with them, one for food, the other as their canine companion. Far-fetched? perhaps.

Closing Comments

These articles imply that: The original Fuegians that reached the island 12,000 years ago died out with the Hudson eruption 7,750 BP. They were replaced by people who moved south into a vacant patagonia, perhaps following guanaco and rhea who also repopulated the region several hundred years later. Possibly not all of the original inhabitants died (they adapted to catch seals, whales, fish) and somehow survived, evolving into the historic Alakaluf and Yamana (Yagans). Some retained the terrestrial culture (Selk'nam and Haush). Later groups reached the region with new technologies and gene inflow.

The myth of the ancient Tachwüll dwarves or "first men" who were destroyed by a volcanic eruption may have come from the H1 eruption.

Perhaps a story told by the Tehuelche chief Kánkel to Welsh explorer ap Iwan in the late 1800s backs this notion; the native chief had said that long ago his ancestors were remiss to do something that their God had asked them to do, so it decided to punish them and made “all their horses go into the ground through a volcano’s crater, and since then a petrified horse skull marks this place." This event happened at Ashpaik (46°39’ S, 70°47’ W), some 30 km (18 mi.) southeast of Lake Buenos Aires, at Cerro Volcán (Volcano Hill). Not too far from Hudson Volcano. According to Musters who visited this place in 1870, it was at this “God’s Hill” that Tehuelche’s “Great Spirit” dispersed the animals he had created in all directions.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Chueiquehuecu (La Pampa) monster

 

Yesterday I mentioned a book by Alberto Vuletín on the name places of La Pampa province, Argentina, just north of the Patagonian border (marked by the Colorado River). Besides hairy snakes, the book also mentions another strange creature, the Chueiquehuecú.

Chueiquehuecú

There is a place close in the Capital Department of the province of La Pampa, known as Monte Chué, which is the abbreviated form for the Copse of the Chueiquehuecú.

This being is described as a "Fabulous animal" also known as "Chué" or "Chuel", that " lives permanently in the water or in very humid places. They believe that it harms those that swim and that sometimes it can be seen roaming the shady forests.[1]

According to historian Rodolfo Casamiquela [2], the name is not a Mapuche word but perhaps of the Northern Tehuleche natives, and its meaning is unknown.

The Mapuche occupied the region after the 1600s, displacing and absorbing the original inhabitants of Tehuelche origin. The Tehuelche in turn occupied the whole of Eastern Patagonia, and part of the Pampas prairies, from Tierra del Fuego (where they were known as Selk'nam) to Buenos Aires (they were named Pampas in that area). The Mapuche, after the Spanish displaced them from their homeland in Chile, crossed the Andes into Argentina and imposed their culture and language on the Tehuelche groups and also on other natives of Neuquén province of Huarpid origin (the Pehuenches, Pichunches and Manzaneros).

If the word is of Tehuelche origin, is is indeed ancient and predates any possible myths introduced by the Mapuche.

Chel or Chuel

On the other hand, another publication [5], referring to a Patagonian town named Choele Choel, set on the Negro River (which got its name from a large fertile island in the river), says that the words Choele and Choel may not be Mapuche; but if they were, the name is surely spelt incorrectly. It goes on to state that the closest similar word for "Choel" is: "Chel" a Mapuche word meaning "frightening or terrifying being".

You can read about the evil connotations given to the word "Chel" in my post on the Tachwull dwarves, related to evil spirits known as "chelule" or "sechu".

A word which, as we can see is a mystery in itself: is it Tehuelche or Mapuche?
Either way, its connotation is evil and inspires fear.

The Huallipen "sheep-calf"

However, Vuletín in another book [3] says that the Chueiqhehuecu is no other than the Mapuche myhtical beast, the "huallepéñ", which is definitively a Mapuche beast (see my post on Huallipen, the "sheep - calf"), which is an agile and dangerous aquatic beast that attacks people and animals fiercely.

So, here we have a creature that is common to two native groups and has a distinctive name in each culture: Chueiquehuecu (Tehuelche) and Huallipen (Mapuche).

Huecú

But you may have noticed that the name of the monster ends with the word "huecu", this, according to Chilean folklorist Vicuñ Cifuentes, is a "terrible", "ugly", "aquatic [being] that lives in shallow and solitary lakes", an "amphibian" that drags its victims under water with horse and all.[4] It is found in Chile.

Its horse dragging abilities are similar to those of the Gurufilu fox-snake.

The animal seems to have quite a wide range, from Chile to Northern Patagonia. What it is though, will remain a mystery.

Sources.

[1] Alberto Vuletín, (1972). La Pampa, Grafías y etimologías toponímicas aborígenes. B. Aires, Eudeba. pp. 142.
[2] Rodolfo Casamiquela, (1968). Geonimia: obra mapa de La Pampa., Biblioteca Pampeana, pp. 22.
[3] Alberto Vuletín (1982), Huecuvumapu. Gardenia, pp. 45.
[4] Vicuña Cifuentes, (1947), Mitos y Supersticiones, Nascimiento. pp. 53+.
[5] Boletín de la Academia Nacional de la Historia, Vol. 34. 1963, pp.798.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

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

Tachwüll more information

 

The text on Tatchwell.[2]

While conducting some additional research on the Tachwüll (what can I say, I read all I can on Patagonia and sometimes come across interesting information), I came across an article by Mateo Martinic : "Documentos inéditos para la historia de Magallanes 'Memorándum Referido a los Patagones'", published in 2007.[1]
Martinic presents it as an "unpublished" document which was sent to him by Mrs. Jean Cameron, in charge of the Archives at Falkland Islands, which bears the title "Memorandum respecting the Patagonians". The notes did not indicate the author or the year it was written, and Martinic correctly (as we will see below) dates it to around 1840-41.

There are two parts to this story, one regarding the "unpublished" letter, the other about the "Tachwüll". This post will deal with both.

The "unpublished" letter

Martinic was wrong, the letter had been published before, in 1843 by the British Parliament's House of Commons. [2] It was written in 1842 (Martinic was quite close in his estimated time frame):

The above notes were furnished to the Lieut governor by Captain Allen F Gardiner RN who collected them in Patagonia in the early part of the present year 1842. [2]

The text was mentioned again in print in 1964 [3]. So, it was not "unpublished" after all.

The positive thing is that it mentions some people named Tatchwell, and states that they are natives, not dwarves.

Tatchwell or Tachwüll

I will quote Gardiner's text in full (the part that mentions these natives). By the way, Allen Francis Gardiner (1794–1851) was a British Royal Navy officer and missionary and he starved to death in Tierra del Fuego, after an unsucessful attempt to set up a mission among the Yaghans.

First he stated that "There are five tribes of Patagonians [...] and one on the sea coast west of the Cordilleras [...] [these are the] Tatchwell Cho karro west of the Cordilleras 4,000 [population] "[2]

I am at a loss to explain what Cho karro is. But lets go to Gardiners memorandum; he then gives an account that he got from a man, his wife and son, who belonged to the "Tatchwell tribe":
My comments are in brackets:

The district by the Tatchwell is wet and rainy and heavily timbered with trees of great size tents dress and stature is similar to that of the other Patagonian tribes they have canoes but these are only employed for crossing rivers and are merely a light covered with guannco skins.


[Note that they are "the same size" as the other Tehuelche, these Tatchwell are not dwarfs]

They use no paddles but are towed across by their swimming before with a lasso attached to their tails. This country is represented as about north west of Oazy Harbour [Which is located on the Strait of Magellan at 52° 30' S; 70° 31' W ] but in order to reach it is necessary to travel from thence considerably to the northward as the pass through Cordilleras in that part is better suited for horses than one farther south which they do frequent.


[This is correct, there are no passes south of Lake Pueyrredón 47° 16'S. Because of the Southern Continental Ice Field that reaches from the Pacific Ocean coast to the Andean Peaks between lakes San Martín and Mount Payne.]

In the neighbourhood of this pass there is a large lake with an island in it. This of the country and around the lake is inhabited by a tribe called Thit titch whose chief named Tchucato.

[There are several lakes with Islands in them in the area: Lake Belgrano (47°51'S, 72°10'W), San Martín (48°47'S, 72°50'W), Pueyrredón (47°14'S, 72°05'W) and Buenos Aires (46°24'S, 71°45'W. Though Martinic believes that the natives were talking about Lake Nahuel Huapi (41°01S, 71°27'W), which is too far north in my opinion.

I have heard the name Thucato before, but not Thit Titch]

They are more numerous than all the three Choanik [Tehuelche] tribes wear ostrich feathers on heir heads woollen ponchos and a sort of trowsers cultivate ground and have numerous flocks and herds of sheep cattle and horses. Their is different from that of the Choanik they trade occasionally with the Spanish settlements. Through this people they pass on their way across the Cordilleras and direct their course towards the south west [to go to the Strait of Magellan].

[These Thit Titch natives are without doubt, some Mapuche group, because these were Farmers, cattle breeders and weavers. The Tatchwell live to the west of the Andes]

The lake above mentioned they call Chobit it is about seven days on horseback from Oazy Harbour and thence to the Tatchwell on account of the ruggedness of the route and the forests would occupy ten days more. Another tribe called Eaks was also mentioned by the same individual they a district north of the Tatchwell between the Cordilleras and the sea [to the East, the Pacific Ocean as we will see below] but there is intercourse between the two people as their language differs and in one direction a considerable river which they cannot cross in their canoes runs between them.


[Seven days at about 35 km a day (roughly 20 mi.) is 245 km or 150 mi. Then another 10 days or 350 km (217 mi.), the lake's native name is not recorded though, Chobit sounds a lot like Chubut, the name of a Patagonian River and Province.

The distance from Oazy to del Toro Lake by Mount Paine is about 240 km. And this lake has an island in it. An additional 350 km places the territory of the Tatchwell in the area between lakes San Martín, Belgrano and the mouth of Baker River on the South Pacific Ocean.]

The Eaks are a shorter race than the Patagonians and are habited in ponchos. It appears to me probable that the lake called Chobit by these people is the same from Viedmas testimony is marked on the maps Capar [current lake Argentino or perhaps lake Viedma] and the wearing of feathers in the hair and other circumstances related by the Tatchwell man Wao principally the former is I think sufficient to identify the Thet titch with the Pewenches of which nation they are probably a tribe. [2]

Intrigued by this text and the names of different native groups (new to me) I did some further research: [4]



The text above was written in 1851 by the South American Missionary Society (of which Gardiner was its first secretary in 1844). Below is the "text version":

the Tatchwell are found far to the westward near to the eastern slopes of the Cordillera fronting the archipelago of Madre del Dios as nearly as I could ascertain from the account given me by a native of that part of the country whom I met in 1842 during my stay in Coazy [sic] harbour . [4]

Which places these Tatchwell on the Chilean side of the Andes, close to Madre de Dios islands. These are located south of Taitao, and of the Gulf of Penas, (50° 15' 47 S, 75°18' 30 W). This is between del Toro Lake and Baker river's Mouth. To the west of the Continental Ice Sheet. If so, the Tatchwell were living in a dreadful environment, and were very likely Alakaluf canoe people which were not Tehuelche but a differente group, with their own language and culture.

Regarding the Eaks which lived to the north of the Tatchwell, the name does not appear in any book or paper regarding Patagonian natives however, I did find an interesting remark [5] which gives the word used by the Northern Tehuelche (Günnuna Kenna or Gennakenk ), also known as Pampa (or Puelche, the name given to them by the Mapuche): [5]

The Pampa called these groups with the following names: Tehuelche = Ehnakena; Mapuche = Telunakena or Iaskas.

So here we have a word Iaskas (the last "s" is the Spanish plural), whose english pronounciation is easkah, which sounds very similar to Gardiner's Eaks. Furthermore, the fact that they wore woven clothes and had domestic animals and were farmers is a clear indication that they were Chilean Mapuche (the only sedentary natives in Patagonia). However Martinic in his paper [1] says that these may be "Pampas Indians" due to the different language (maybe he is referring to the Mapuche speaking "Puelche" and not the "Tehuelche" speaking Gennakenk which bear the same name.

Summary

There was a native group, of Tehuelche stock living to the west of the Andes somewhere between del Toro Lake and the mouth of Baker River, in Chile. They lived south of the Mapuche (Eaks). Were similar in dress, tents and size to the other Tehuelche of the Patagonia. They used light rafts to cross rivers. They were not dwarves.

The problem is that the only known natives in that area were not Tehuelche but Alakaluf, another totally distinct group, with their own language and clothing and way of life. They did have canoes but did not venture far inland. They did not have horses and did not ride from the Strait of Magellan to the Madre de Dios Islands.

Regadding my dwarf, the Tachwüll, these mysterious natives, the Tatchwell may have recieved their name from the dwarf, as they lived in the same area, in the mountains and forests which the Tehuelche feared and seldom entered.

This deserves some further research and a letter to the journal (Magallania) to rectify Martinic's paper.

New. Nov. 2, 2010 Today I wrote to Magallania, sending them a "comment" about the author and publication in 1843 of this paper as well as some interesting information regarding the "tatchwell". The letter is online, (in Spanish) at the following link:
Comentario sobre un Memorándum inédito referido a los Patagones (Martinic, 2007) by Austin V. Whittall.

Sources.

[1] Mateo Martinic B. DOCUMENTOS INÉDITOS PARA LA HISTORIA DE MAGALLANES "MEMORÁNDUM REFERIDO A LOS PATAGONES". Magallania [online]. 2007, vol.35, n.2 [citado 2010-10-27], pp. 159-164 . Disponible en: . ISSN 0718-2244. doi: 10.4067/S0718-22442007000200013.
[2] Accounts and Papers. COLONIES. Session 2 February 24 August 1843. 33. VOL XXXIII. House of Commons papers, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. HMSO, 1843
[3] Boletín de la Academia Nacional de la Historia, (1964), Academia Nacional de la Historia (Argentina). vol. 35, pp. 280.
[4] South American missionary society, (1851). Remarks on the Aborigines of South America from Personal Observation THE PATAGONIANS. In The Voice of pity for South America . London, J. Nisbet & Co. pp 92+
[5] Bórmida, Marcelo, and Casamiquela, Rodolfo (1958). Etnografía gününa-kena. Testimonio del último de los tehuelches septentrionales. Runa, Buenos Aires, vol. 9, nºs 1-2, pp. 153-193

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

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

Dwarf at Gualicho Cave?

 

 

Rock Art at Gualicho Cave. Dwarfs?. The black and white image is from [1]

Gualicho Cave is located by the shore of Lake Argentino about 10 km (6 mi) east of the town of Calafate in Santa Cruz province, Argentina, (50°17’ S, 72°10’ W) . It was discovered by chance by Francisco Moreno in the 1870s when he explored the area. He named it Gualicho, after the evil spirit of the Mapuche natives. The name is not the one given to it by the local Aonikenk. In it he found the mummified remains of a native which can be seen at the La Plata Science Museum.

It has ancient (about ten thousand years old) rock art. The example shown above is an interesting one.

The colored one (below)shows two figures, with three digits on their feet and three fingers on their hands. Salesian priest Manuel Jesús Molina believed that these were depictions of the fuegian monkey (Yosi), because they were drawn to show movement just like monkeys. He included other images (above in black and white) which are tailed, and one of them has three fingers.

I will quote Molina extensively below:

On a rock wall at Gualichu Point at Lake Argentino are some humanoid paintings of a faded purple color which may depict these fuegopithecus. They are drawings totally different from others of human hunters like the hunting scenes of the upper Pinturas River or in the dancing scenes at Charcamac Gully.

In one of them it is sitting on its legs [...] with its arms open like making signs with its hands. In others it is seen in the ungainly position it adopted while it walked [...] what can not be seen in these figures is the weapon the fuegian monkey used to attack or defend itself.[1]

The small figure in the colored image, on the right has a tail (though it could be a young boy and what hangs between his legs may be his penis not a tail). The three digits may be a stylized way of depicting people. Hard to tell after ten thousand years!

Now, if it is a dwarf, it may be Tachwull, the aonikenk dwarf and not Yosi, the Fuegian monkey.

Sources.

[1] Molina, M., (1973). El yóshil o mono fueguino. Karukinká. B. Aires. v.1:10-14.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

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

Chelep, the hairy Patagonian dwarf

 

Orangutan, from an old engraving.

Some more information on the intriguing subject of Patagonian dwarves. In previous posts, I have written about the different kinds of dwarves that have been reported in Patagonia. Today we will look into the Chelep, a dwarf that was likened to an orangutan.

Chelep, monkey like dwarf.

Chelep is an interesting creature and shares several features with the Fuegian Yosi and the Chiloé Island Trauco. Both of which are dwarfish, hairy, carry sticks or clubs, and very monkey-like.

Chelep may also be the origin of the myth regarding the “first men” or Tachwull .

The source on Chelep is a diary written by a Santiago Dunne, a Chilean government official in 1845, at Punta Arenas. He jotted down reports from a man named Centurión, who was not a native, but lived among them.

Below I will quote extensively from this diary (I have translated it from Spanish to English respecting the style of Dunne):

“that between the Negro and the Santa Cruz Rivers, along the inland road which is where the Indians travel, there are two places where there are many stone homes painted with various colors, and which are inhabited by a race that as described by the Patagons [Aonikenk] have a lot of resemblance to the orangutans: these sites are [not] along the same road but [towards] the Andes. Small size, hairy body and a club or baculus always in their hand. The cover with a short guanaco fur in the same way those [natives] of Tierra del Fuego do.
The Patagons call them Chelep. Most of these groups of Indians have visited those places and have been in the same homes, but have never been able to take one of their inhabitants despite that they have seen them and ran very close to them and even been hit by stones thrown by them; which has led them to take them for witches and they do not go to their caves because they must not be other than [illegible] in great numbers.
It should be noted that the Patagons [Aonikenk] only when they go to the Negro River, which does not happen frequently, is when the chelep see them arriving, because they have always done so during daytime, run away and get lost in forests [*] abandoning their lodges in which can be found bones and guanaco hides and that sometimes those that have slept close to such homes, have been robbed and some of their horses killed” . [1]

[*] though the Spanish word “montes” can also mean “mountains”.

More on the Chelep. A close encounter.

Centurión, Dunne’s informant had not been to the Chelep’s country, but his wife had, and she told Dunne the following:

She was at those homes only accompanied by her elder sister, because all the others that were going with her [to the Negro River] had gone out to the fields, far away […] while alone with her sister, the dog that they had with them began to bark and then they saw coming towards them a woman carrying a child and her club; this frightened them and her companion hid among a pile of hides that were there, but that she could not do the same, she pretended to be dead;
The new arrival saw her and with the tip of her club moved her but the child she carried in her arms cried every time she touche her and that at last she left her without harming her and only to the dog, which had bothered her, clubbed it. [2]

What kind of creature is the Chelep? a Homo erectus?

Dunne wrote that the natives frightened their children with these stories, but he believed that they may have some truth behind them, and that the Chelep were probably some "lost" tribe of the Tehuelche group.

However, their pre-human appearance, their monkey-like features may indicate some kind of non-human homind (i.e. a homo erectus or, if tiny and dwarfish, even a variety of Flores Island "hobbit") in southern South America. The cross cultural similarities (the creature appears under different names among all the Patagonian natives from Tierra del Fuego to Central Chile) also support this idea.

See this Map for a clear idea of where the different varieties of Patagonian dwarves lived.

Bibliography

[1] Martinic Mateo, (2005). De la Trapananda al Aysen: una mirada reflexiva sobre el acontecer de la Región de Aysen desde la prehistoria hasta nuestros días . Pehuén. pp. 29.

[2] Martinic Mateo, (2000). Informaciones Etnográficas extraidas del diario inedito de Santiago Dunne, Secretario de la Gobernación de Magallanes (1845). Anales del Instituto de la Patagonia: Serie Ciencias humanas, Vol. 28., Instituto de la Patagonia. Pp. 49 -50

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

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

“Tachwüll” the first men

 

JJust north of Tierra del Fuego in southern Patagonia, is the land of the Aonikenk natives. They believed in the existence of an evil midget, Tachwüll[*], the maker of bolas, the stone balls of the boleadoras.

[*] As is frequent with reducing an unwritten language into writing, the different chroniclers translated the words phonetically into their respective languages. Though spelt differently, they all retain the original sound (i.e. Tachwüll, Chelule, Chechuelli, Chahuelli, Táchul, Talwulli, Sechu, etc.). This will be seen repeatedly in my book and these posts.

The name boleadora derives from the Spanish word “bola” (ball); they were stones balls sheathed with leather and attached to strong tendon straps that were whirled above the head to gain momentum and then thrown so as to entangle around the hunted animal’s legs.

The name Tachwüll was first recorded by Pigafetta in 1520, who noted that the Patagones (Aonikenk Tehuelches) called their lesser devils Chelule.[1]

The Poya, a Tehuelche group that lived in northern Patagonia gave it a similar name Chechuelli or Chahuelli[2] and their Mapuche neighbors also believed in the evil elf, which they called Sechu.[3]

The same-sounding name reflects a common origin for the Sechu - Chelule - Chechuelli - Tachwüll dwarf.

The Aonikenk’s Paleo-Indian ancestors had hunted guanaco on foot during milennia using bolas as well as bow and arrow. However, when they adopted the horse after the Spaniards introduced them into South America, they took to hunting with bolas again. The reason was simple: aiming and shooting an arrow at a running guanaco while riding a horse was much harder and less effective than whirling and hurling boleadoras to tangle its legs.

Once they lost the art of making the solid spherical hard stone bolas, they took to recycling the ones that they found strewn on the ancient Paleo-Indian hunting grounds or molded new ones in softer and less durable soap-stone.

Having forgotten about their Paleo-Indian ancestors, the Aonikenk believed that these tough bolas had been made by Tachwüll, whom they pictured as a small animal-like dwarf that lived in the Andes. The fact that they considered it an animal may imply a simian aspect – perhaps a monkey relative of the Fuegian Yosi ( See our post on him Here).

They said that he could often be heard chipping stones in the rocky gullies, and scratching the centerline groove that surrounded the bola with its sharp nails (the boleadoras’ leather strap was firmly fixed to this groove to hold the ball).

These Tachwüll were primitive (in certain ways pre-human), and were considered by the natives as the first men to inhabit the Earth, eons ago, before “real” men appeared.

Historian Federico Escalada, calling them Táchul says that these original inhabitants were “small people […] something like the ‘gnomes’ or ‘dwarves’ of our fairy tales”.[4]

Although, according to the natives, most of them died in the terrible geological cataclysm that formed the Andes, a few had managed to survive and continued living in the mountains where, according to Patagonian historian Casamiquela (who called them Talwulli), he lived with his wife, the monstrous Elëngassën (we will post about her later).[4][5]

Aonikenk Chief Papon, who died a poor drunkard in 1892, at the end of his life he was so poor that he sold at Punta Arenas a set of boleadoras that he believed were made of brass but were actually pure gold. When asked about where he found the nugget, Papon said that he found it by an ancient city that was buried under the recent lava flows of a nearby volcano (some believed that the city was the famous lost Patagonian City of Caesars[*], a fabulous El Dorado which is a tale that deserves a book of its own). This city, according to Papon was inhabited by dwarves.[6]

[*] The legend of the City of Caesars began in the mid XVIth century. It revolved around an incredibly wealthy city set in Patagonia (i.e. its roads were paved with gold) and was inhabited by people of European origin who led secluded lives there. Several expeditions were sent to find it, and it was not until the late XVIIIth century that it lost credibility


Though his tale was dismissed as nonsense, there is some documentary evidence written by the early Patagonian explorers that mentions dwarfish beings in the area close to the Strait of Magellan.

Contemporary chronicles.

1591 Anthonie Knivet wrote about strange small men at Port Famine close to Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan.[7]

A few years later, in 1614 Joris van Spilbergen uncovered at Tierra del Fuego a grave holding the body of “a being […] not longer than 3½ feet [107 cm]”.[8] It is likely that it was the body of a child, but the Dutch preferred to believe it was that of a pygmy.

In 1633, according to historian priest Diego de Rosales at Culacoya close to Concepción in Chile’s northern Patagonia, a dwarf was seen.[9]

In 1646, Jesuit priest Alonso De Ovalle in his history of Chile wrote that there were “pygmies” at the Straits of Magellan.[10]

Closer to our time, in 1845, Santiago Dunne, secretary to the governor of Punta Arenas, wrote that the natives had told him of a strange city with “stone houses inhabited by hairy pygmies like dwarves, called Chélep”.[6] This over was half a century before Chief Papon saw his lava covered city of dwarves.

Post with more information on the Chelep.

Closing comments.

Myth? Fantasy? or some now disappeared dwarfish creature? It has not been reported since the end of the XIXth century. Could it be related to Trauco or Anchimallén? or to the intriguing Fuegian monkey, the Yosi? Perhaps.

Bibliography.

[1] Pigafetta, A., (1899). Primer Viaje Alrededor del Mundo. Madrid. 1899. pp. 16.
[2] de Olivares, M., (2005). Los jesuitas en la Patagonia: Las misiones en la Araucania y el Nahuelhapi 1593- 1736. B. Aires: Continente pp. 182.
[3] Latcham, R., (1924). La organización social y las creencias religiosas de los antiguos araucanos. Santiago: Cervantes. pp. 580.
[4] Escalada, F., (1949). El Complejo Tehuelche. B. Aires: Coni. pp. 327.
[5] Casamiquela R., (1988). En pos del gualicho. B. Aires: Fondo Edit. Rionegrino-EUDEBA. pp. 120. Citing: Bormida, M. and Siffredi, A., (1969). Mitología de los Tehuelche Meridionales. B. Aires: Runa. v.xii.
[6] Martinic B, M., (2007). Los Césares de la Patagonia: ¿Otra Fuente Indígena para la leyenda o hasta ahora desconocida creación del imaginario Aónikenk? Magallania. v.35, N° 2: pp. 7-14.
[7] Purchas S., [Comp] (1625). Haklvytvs posthumus or, Pvrchas.... London: H. Fetherston. v. 4. pp. 1232.
[8] Van Spilbergen, J., (1906). The East and West Indian mirror: being an account of Joris van Speilbergen's voyage round the world (1614-1617).... London: Hakluyt Society.
pp. 41.
[9] de Rosales, D., (1878). Historia General del Reyno de Chile. Flandes Indiano. Valparaiso: Impr. del Mercurio. Tomo ii. Libro IV. Cap. I.
[10] de Ovalle, A., (1646). Histórica Relación del Reyno de Chile.... Roma: Francisco Caballo. pp. 100-101.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

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