The first human beings in the Guianas were Paleolithic hunters who arrived ca. 11,000 BC. They lived mainly in savanna areas in the interior of the Guianas. Most finds occur in the Sipaliwini Savanna of southern Suriname and at Tupuken in Venezuelan Guiana (Boomert 1980a). It is probable that at this time, a savanna belt ran from the western Venezuelan coast to the center of the Guianas, i. e., southern Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana (Versteeg 2003). These savannas are very flat extended surfaces covered by high grass, where rounded hills, with occasional rock shelters, emerge in some places.
Handbook of South American Archaeology, edited by Helaine Silverman and William H. Isbell.
The oldest sites with roughly worked stones are dated ca. 11,000 BC in the lower Orinoco, near Tupuken (Cruxent 1972). The 30 Sipaliwini sites in Suriname seem to be slightly more recent: ca. 8000 BC (Versteeg 2003). There are 20 workshops divided between temporary camps sites and specialized sites. The most frequent sites are temporary, with remains of the chippings of one of a few stones probably found during hunting. They consist of a restricted area with some waste flakes and sometimes a projectile point, broken during manufacture. The two specialized sites are much larger, extending over approximately the surface of a football field (Frans C. Bubberman, personal communication). The large surface of these two workshops, the variety of the used rock species, and the great quantity of remains suggest that these sites were regularly used over a long period. The remains consist of retouched stone artifacts such as large projectile points, graters or scrapers, broken tools, waste core, hammer stones, and many waste flakes.
The tools can be divided in four main categories: hammer stones, bifaces, cutting tools, and projectile points. Heavy oval or round quartz pebbles were used as hammer stones to chip other stones. The large bifaces measure up to 20 cm in length. The cutting tools are well-retouched scrapers, graters or knives. The triangular projectile points have four main shapes: with a flat base, with a tang at the base, with a concave base, and with a three-pointed base. The two first types are generally large and could have been used as spearheads, whereas the two other smaller ones were arrowheads. These projectile points are most useful to hunt relatively large animals in open terrain, such as deer or perhaps even mastodonts and megatheriums that belong to the Pleistocene megafauna.
It seems that the Sipaliwini hunters did not live in the workshops; they preferred the rock shelters at the foot of the hills. Petroglyphs are present in some of these rock shelters, but they cannot be securely attributed to these groups, because the sherds found in the cave prove that they were inhabited long after the hunters’ departure.
Apart from the savanna finds discussed, comparable projectile points were also found in the tropical forest as isolated finds. The interpretation of this pattern of finds is that the main activities of these groups of Paleolithic hunters were concentrated in savanna areas and in the forested margins of these savannas. They burned the savannas and in this way they extended the size of these savannas [Note 1]. For specific purposes such as collecting forest products like seeds and fruits, they made extensive trips into the tropical rain forest.
The first inhabitants of the Guianas had territories with the best hunting grounds and areas where they could find raw materials, for instance the stone sources from which they made their tools. These hunters-gatherers could cross the landscape and get supplies freely because they possessed a large area of natural resources. The archaeological record does not supply us with information on other Indian groups in this part of the world in this time period. For these first inhabitants of the Guianas the “Paradise premise” is valid: they could choose where to live. There is no evidence of any serious rivals.
During the archaeologically unknown time between 8000 and 2500 BC small nomadic bands of hunters-gatherers probably lived in the forest of the interior and on the coast of the Guianas and left behind only few traces of their presence.
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