Two years ago, I received news from the geographer and researcher Sergio Santos, part of the History department at the State Faculty of Philosophy, Science and Arts ‘União da Vitória’ (FAFI), of the existence of Rock Art in a subterranean gallery in Porto União, Santa Catarina, almost 500 kms from state capital and my base, Florianópolis. As I am researching the underground galleries in Urubici, around 300 kms south-east of the above site, I was obviously interested in the news. I was keen to know if the two galleries were similar (in terms of symbolism etc) and, when I failed to receive further reports or even the odd photo, I resolved to make the trip, eventually travelling in December 2003.

In Porto Uniao, I visited FAFI and, on meeting the cultural director of the young magazine ‘Ensino & Pesquisa’ (“Teaching & Research”), Michel Kobelinski, was kindly given a copy of the first edition (July 2002), which features one of his articles. The essay speaks of research carried out in the ‘Medio Iguaçu’ region, covering south-central Parana state and north-central Santa Catarina state, from page 70 through 100. However, as regards ‘arte rupestre’ in Santa Catarina, only one mention is made and it concerns the Caverna do Alemão (‘the German’s Cave’) site in Barra Grande, Santa Cruz do Timbó district, 30 kms from FAFI, which displays vertical lines, various ‘step-like’ designs and a linear series of indentations and cupulas. I would visit the site the next morning.
First, though, I went to explore some ‘tocas’ (cave-dens) at the Morro da Cruz, within the city of Porto Uniao, the which had supposedly never been researched before.

These ‘tocas’ consist of three underground galleries of sandstone (the same stone as in Urubici) which are unfortunately almost totally covered in modern grafitti. However, I was still able to identify around 20 rupestrian markings, some of which I had never come across before (certain faces/masks and a vulva-representation in both close-up and background artwork). The other etchings were cupulas, a large subdivided lozenge, rectangles and hearts.

The faces/masks are slightly different from those I have researched at Urubici and are closer in essence to those of northern Venezuela and in the Caribbe. At the archaeological museum in Caçador (70 kms outside Porto União), there exist dozens of small sculpted heads made from stone, found in local excavations and which have faces similar to those represented in this Rock Art.
The large vulva is unique in its artistic style but is a common symbol within rupestrian art, also featuring heavily at Urubici. It must surely be a symbol of a long-gone religion thereby auto-proving its age!
The rectangles also exist in Urubici.
The hearts, despite their “modern” appearance, are also pre-historic symbols: I found a heart on one of the Ilhas da Baía de Babitonga and, at the Archaeological Museum in Mata-RS, Brazil, there is a heart-shaped stone with a vulva etched into the middle. In C.N. Dubelaar’s book, mentioned below, masks within hearts as well as heart-shaped masks can be found on pages 187 and 456.
The lozenge, a common figure in Rock Art the world over, is subdivided and inserted with a square. It is divided into four lozenges, which, in turn, are split down the middle to form two triangles, one positive/masculine and the other negative/feminine.

In Barra Grande, Santa Cruz do Timbó district, I visited a subterranean gallery and a large grotto with my guide Emílio Bauer, a local and thus a neighbour of these archaeological sites.
The ‘galeria subterrânea’ runs along roughly 100 ms of low corridor and features Rock Art in the form of parallel vertical line-markings and small cupulas. ‘A Toca Grande’, as the grotto is known, is approximately 7 or 8 ms high, offering a 40-metre entrance, and is 60 ms deep. It is covered from head to foot in grafitti even in the most difficult-to-access areas but here I was also blessed by another miracle in spotting, deep within the cave on a vertical wall, a triangular surface with a downwards-heading vertex which attracted my attention. It was Mask BG – 01, with a smiling face: a remarkable discovery.

The historian Johnni Langer and his friend geographer Sérgio Santos, researchers of UNICS, found, in it is worth him/it of Rio Iguaçu, a rock block with cupulas and interlinked lines. Similar the other existent ones in Corumbá (MS) and in Galícia (Spain) he/she seems to have us ritual function. It is an important discovery, because it shows the great variety of the State rock art, a visited area and inhabited for different people in the prehistory.

I recommend that those interested in doing so should look for similar masks to those chronicled above from Porto Uniao in the following books plus my own website.

- Arte Rupestre Del Município Vargas; Alexis Rojas e Luis Thanyi; pages 24, 41 and 105

- The Petroglyphs of The Lesser Antilles, The Virgin Island and Trinidad; C.N.Dubelaar; pages 72, 73, 74, 75, 187, 216, 252, 345, 367 and 455

- www.keler.lucas.nom.br - Urubici

Thank you for your attention!

Keler Lucas