Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Amazonian connection

1995; Springer Science+Business Media; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-94-011-0031-1_8

2215-1729

F. D. Por,

Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory

A much quoted but little known connection exists between the headwaters of the Jaurú, a major tributary of the Upper Paraguay and the headwaters of Rio Guaporé, itself a tributary of the Amazon basin (Grabert, 1967; Bonetto, 1975; Diegues 1990; Bonetto and Wais, 1990). it is evident that this connection is not a clearly defined one, like the connection through the Cassiquiare canal between the Rio Negro and the Orinoco, but it is remarkable how little we know about it. An important tributary of the Jaurú, Rio Aguapei, collects its waters from a swampy area which feeds also Rio Alegre, a tributary of the Guaporé. Vieira de Campos (1969) gives a very plastic description of these swamps in which the smallest trench or even a fallen log might change the direction of the drainage of a certain waterbody: either to flow to the Amazon or to the La Plata. Ab'Saber (1988) quotes Rosa and Santos (1982) when he says that the Guaporé depression is the link between the depressions oriented towards the south Amazon and those leading to the La Plata basin.