CONTENTS

AMAZONIA
YANOMAMI
YUCUNAS
MISCELLANEOUS
FLOTTING VILLAGE
GUARANI HOUSES
BANDEIRISTA
0⁰ Equator
Amazonian
Rainforest
Amazonia as delineated by the WWF
 Brazil

Peru Colombia Venezuela Ecuador

Bolivia Guyana Suriname French Guiana

 SIZ
MASSIVE!!! How does 2,123,562 sq
miles sound?!?!?
That’s the equivalent of 140 keralas-
pretty big, eh?

E
If the Amazon was a country it would be the 9th largest country on the
planet (1.2 billion acres or 48 million football fields).
R.Amazon is the second longest river in the world and by far the largest by
waterflow with an average discharge greater than the next seven largest rivers
combined
the Amazonia is made up of a mosaic of ecosystems and vegetation types including
rainforests, seasonal forests, deciduous forests, flooded forests, and savannas
CLIMATOLOGY
hot and humid rains almost the whole year
throughout the year,
60-180 inches to 30-100 inches
with an average annual
temperature of 27°C
(80.7°F)
AMAZING
A M A Z O N I A

Amazon rainforest is home to many strangest

looking, largest and smallest, loudest and quietest,
more dangerous and least frightening animals on
Earth.
MAMMELS X 427

AVIANS
X 1294

INSECTS
X 2.5 million
many more remaining to be discovered
 FISHES
X 2,200

X 378
REPTILES

X 428
AMPHIBIANS
many more remaining to be discovered
 moreover 438,000 plant species
many more remaining to be discovered or catalogued
Dendrobates Cruziohyla Dendrobates Agalychnis Hyla rhodopepla
auratus craspedopus galactonotus calidryas
Ocelot Tapir Two Toed Sloth Capybara Armadillo
 Many rare birds inhabit the Amazon

Scarlet macaw (Ara macao), River Xingu,

Amazonia
And also some dangerous animals.
Indigenous People

• There were an estimated ten million

Indians living in the Amazonian
Rainforest five centuries ago. Today
there are less than 200,000.
• In Brazil alone, European colonists have
destroyed more than 90 indigenous
tribes since the 1900’s.
• With them have gone centuries of
accumulated knowledge of the medicinal
value of rainforest species.
Indigenous people * mother tongue Residence

yanomami Yanomaman languages Yanos/shabono

Yucuna yucuna Yukana Malocas

* This list is incomplete

YANOMAMI
The Yanomami are one of the largest relatively isolated tribes in
South America. They live in the rainforests and mountains of
northern Brazil and southern Venezuela.
0⁰ equator
The Yanomami believe strongly in equality among people. Each
community is independent from others and they do not
recognize ‘chiefs’. Decisions are made by consensus, frequently
after long debates where everybody has a say.
 LIFE
STYLE

Like most Amazonian tribes, tasks are divided between the sexes. Men hunt for game like
peccary, tapir, deer and monkey, and often use curare (a plant extract) to poison their prey.

Although hunting accounts for only 10% of Yanomami food, amongst men it is considered the
most prestigious of skills and meat is greatly valued by everyone.
No hunter ever eats the meat that he has killed. Instead he shares it out among friends and
family. In return, he will be given meat by another hunter.
The Yanomami have a huge botanical knowledge and use about 500 plants for food,
medicine, house building and other artefacts. They provide for themselves partly by
hunting, gathering and fishing, but crops are also grown in large gardens cleared from
the forest.
The Yanomami local groups are generally made up of a multifamily house in
the shape of a cone or truncated cone called yanos
Some yanos can house up to 400 people. The central area is used for activities such
as rituals, feasts and games.
Interior of the Yanomami maloca at night,
Tootobi, Brazil
Yanos are built from raw materials from the jungle, such as leaves, vines, plums
and tree trunks.

-They get heavy damage from rains, winds, and insects, so Yanos are usually
rebuilt every 1 to 2 years.
 After each family builds its own house, a common roof is built connecting all
the individual houses together. Each family is responsible to build its own
section of the common roof. This forms a circular donut-shaped village
 To build the yanos the poles are put in place and secured in
the ground and overhead. Then thousands of leaves are
woven into the thatch. Permanent yanos are usually
surrounded by palisades to protect themselves from possible
attacks. The palisades are about 10 feet long and are made of
logs from palm trees
The walls are held up with
poles and the village roof is made of thatch
(dry leaves and branches)
so after a few years yanos rots and fills with insects and rodents. Then the Yanomami
build a new village, sometimes next to the old one.
Yanomami move every five years or so to find new land to grow food in.
 YUCUNAS

An Amazonian Indian group who today

number about one thousand people.
0⁰ equator

They live near Equator

between 70°31’ and 71°31’ W and
0°45’ and 1° S, which is currently in the
Comisaría Especial del Amazonas in
Colombia
• They reside in a communal house called maloca
• Maloca is a large structure which simultaneously serves as dwelling
site, a temporary village for over one hundred people, a workplace, a
temple, and a burial site.
• Each maloca domestic community is an economically self sufficient
unit with its own territories for shifting horticulture, hunting and
fishing.
Exterior view of a maloca
Construction of maloca starts with autumn equinox

Maloca headman selects the site

The construction team starts clearing jungle and they do complete

malocas in 2 months
weaving palm leaves onto one of the laths that
forms the framework of the roof and holds the
thatch.
 Structure

•The plan of the maloca starts

with the placing of the 4
central posts/poles 4m from
each other

•Once installed four beams

are wedged on top, upon
which a clearstory opening
will be based.

FLOOR ZONING OF MALOCA

MALOCA PROPORTION
The pattern and breadth of its path
within each ,Maloca portray in a
different manner the size,
constitution, capacity of resource
use.
 •The astronomical orientation of
the maloca is determined by the
preferences for an east west axis
for the openings on the gable roof
which allows for a time keeping
device within the malocas as the
sun’s rays sweep its interior.

•The positions of each post, beam

and pinnacle and doors are
ASTRONOMICAL determined by a ritual orientation
of space which is culturally
SYMBOLISM determined by the dominant
yukana classsifactory system and
its semantic fields.
Construction of maloca starts with autumn equinox
MALOCA AS A
CALENDER

The December dry season rituals take place in the maloca’s northern side, the equinoctial ones
in its centre, and the June wet season ones in the southern side, precisely in the part of the
house which the sun illuminates at that time of the year.

The sun’s shafts in the yearly sweep illuminate not only the floor but different parts of the
roof’s interior and posts and beams.
MALOCA AS A
SYMBOL
BUILDING REPRESENTS
ELEMENT
ROOF Male worlds of the ancestors, of music, of
shamanism, of stars, and of high-flying birds

FLOORS Female forces of fertility, regeneration and death

SOUTHERN PART For close kin(jaguar side)

OF MALOCA

NORTHERN PART For allies (anaconda side)

OF MALOCA
AMAZONIA
N
FLOATING
VILLAGE
• The Amazon Basin, the largest in the
world, covers about 30% of South
America.
• Amazonia is very sparsely
populated.
• There are scattered settlements
inland, but most of the population
lives in a few larger cities on the
banks of the Amazon River.
• Due to large variation in the water
level of the river houses are built
on the rafts along the river.
• The houses rise and fall with the
water levels that change from
seasonal flooding.
• Many houses are built together and
they all together known as Floating
village.
 Amazonia Floating Village
• Houses are almost made of
materials gathered from the
rainforest.
• Roofs are made up of woven
palms.
• Walls of these houses are built
from wood taken right from
the Rainforest.
• The walls are only a few feet
tall to let the breeze flow
through.
Guarani Houses

• Sub tropical forest of Brazil &

Nort East Argentina
• In Hot region with High
humidity
• Scattered settlement,Villages
• Slender staffs,bamboo, plalm
leaves, boards. Clay
• Walls build on stave frame
inserted at corners & doorway
• 4 to 6 bamboo along the
corners & 3 along central line
• Palm ribs & wiven mats for
doors
 Bandeirista (Sao Paulo)
• Located in the high Tiete river basin
around the cities of Sao Paulo.
• They have white walls, very few
openings and hipped roofs.
• Foundation – stone,
• Plastered with clay mixed with cow
dung ( 10 – 15 cm)
• Structure – Beams supported by walls
• Roof – Clay tiles
• Windows – blinds inside , shutters
outside
• Floor – Beaten Earth, Wood on top
• Furniture's-undecorated & odd scale
• Walls became Limestone's by 18th
century
• Appropriate to Landscape
 REFERENCES

http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/yanomami/wayoflife#actnow
http://www.wausau.k12.wi.us/east/Student%20Files/Anthropology/Template%202/soci
al.html
http://www.unique-southamerica-travel-experience.com/amazon-rainforest-
climate.html

Encyclopaedia Of Vernacular Architecture Of

The World Volume3
CAMBRIDGE – USA Publisher
ISBN 0521564220, 9780521564229