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Marajó () is a large coastal island in the state of Pará, Brazil. It is the main and largest of the islands in the
Marajó Archipelago Marajó Archipelago ('' pt, arquipélago do Marajó'' is the largest fluvial-maritime archipelago on Earth. Located in the states of Amapá and Pará, in Brazil, it is formed by about 2,500 islands. The main island of the archipelago also has the ...
. Marajó Island is separated from the mainland by
Marajó Bay The Marajó Bay, or Marajoara gulf and Amazon gulf, is an recessed body of water of the Brazilian coast located in the state of Pará. It is roughly in size, and is a receptacle for the waters of the Pará River distributary channel, the waters ...
,
Pará River The Pará River (), also called Parauaú River, Jacaré Grande River, Marajó River Channel, Macacos River Channel, Santa Maria River Channel and Bocas Bay, is a watercourse and immense estuarine complex that functions as a canal between the ...
, smaller rivers (especially Macacos and Tajapuru), Companhia River, Jacaré Grande River, Vieira Grande Bay and
Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Afr ...
. From approximately 400 BC to 1600 AD, Marajó was the site of an advanced Pre-Columbian society called the
Marajoara culture The Marajoara or Marajó culture was an ancient pre-Columbian era civilization that flourished on Marajó island at the mouth of the Amazon River in northern Brazil. In a survey, Charles C. Mann suggests the culture appeared to flourish betwee ...
, which may have numbered more than 100,000 people at its peak. Today, the island is known for its large water buffalo population, as well as the ''
pororoca The Pororoca (, ) is a tidal bore, with waves up to high that travel as much as inland upstream on the Amazon River and adjacent rivers. Its name might come from the indigenous Tupi language, where it could translate into "great roar". It could b ...
''
tidal bore Tidal is the adjectival form of tide. Tidal may also refer to: * ''Tidal'' (album), a 1996 album by Fiona Apple * Tidal (king), a king involved in the Battle of the Vale of Siddim * TidalCycles, a live coding environment for music * Tidal (se ...
periodically exhibited by high tides overcoming the usual complex hydrodynamic interactions in the surrounding rivers. It is the second-largest island in South America, and the 35th largest island in the world. With a land area of Marajó is comparable in size to Switzerland. Its maximum span is long and in perpendicular width.


Geography

Marajó Island is separated from the mainland by
Marajó Bay The Marajó Bay, or Marajoara gulf and Amazon gulf, is an recessed body of water of the Brazilian coast located in the state of Pará. It is roughly in size, and is a receptacle for the waters of the Pará River distributary channel, the waters ...
,
Pará River The Pará River (), also called Parauaú River, Jacaré Grande River, Marajó River Channel, Macacos River Channel, Santa Maria River Channel and Bocas Bay, is a watercourse and immense estuarine complex that functions as a canal between the ...
, smaller rivers (especially Macacos and Tajapuru), Companhia River, Jacaré Grande River, Vieira Grande Bay and
Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Afr ...
. The island sits almost directly on the equator. Together with smaller neighboring islands that are separated from Marajó by rivers, they form the Marajó Archipelago, with an aggregate area of . The archipelago is contained in the
Marajó Archipelago Environmental Protection Area The Marajó Archipelago Environmental Protection Area ( pt, Área de Proteção Ambiental Arquipélago do Marajó) is an environmental protection area in the state of Pará, Brazil. It protects the Marajó Archipelago, made up of marine fluvial i ...
, a sustainable-use conservation unit established in 1989 to protect the environment of the region. Large parts of the islands are flooded during the rainy season because of higher water levels of the rivers along the coast and heavy rainfall in the interior. Marajó is almost entirely flat. During the rainy season, much of the island becomes flooded as a large lake. There are 20 large rivers on the island. Because of the changing water levels and regular seasonal flooding, many settlements are built on stilts (''Palafitas''). The island is known for the ''
pororoca The Pororoca (, ) is a tidal bore, with waves up to high that travel as much as inland upstream on the Amazon River and adjacent rivers. Its name might come from the indigenous Tupi language, where it could translate into "great roar". It could b ...
'', a
tidal bore Tidal is the adjectival form of tide. Tidal may also refer to: * ''Tidal'' (album), a 1996 album by Fiona Apple * Tidal (king), a king involved in the Battle of the Vale of Siddim * TidalCycles, a live coding environment for music * Tidal (se ...
phenomenon in the river that creates large waves reaching in height. It is a tourist destination, especially for surfing of the bore.


Ecology

The eastern side of the island is dominated by
savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...
vegetation. There are large fazendas with animal husbandry. This is also the location of Lake Arari, which has an area of , but shrinks by 80% during the dry season. There are large herds of domesticated water buffalo, which are technically invasive to the island; they now number about 450,000, higher than the island's human population. The western side of the island is characterized by
Várzea forest A várzea forest is a seasonal floodplain forest inundated by whitewater rivers that occurs in the Amazon biome. Until the late 1970s, the definition was less clear and várzea was often used for all periodically flooded Amazonian forests. Althou ...
s and small farms. Lumber and açaí are produced there. The island is in the
Marajó várzea The Marajó várzea (NT0138) is an ecoregion of seasonally and tidally flooded várzea forest in the Amazon biome. It covers a region of sedimentary islands and floodplains at the mouth of the Amazon that is flooded twice daily as the ocean tides ...
ecoregion, an area of seasonally and tidally flooded
várzea forest A várzea forest is a seasonal floodplain forest inundated by whitewater rivers that occurs in the Amazon biome. Until the late 1970s, the definition was less clear and várzea was often used for all periodically flooded Amazonian forests. Althou ...
. To the north of the large savanna area are palm swamps, mainly with Buriti Palm (''
Mauritia flexuosa ''Mauritia flexuosa'', known as the moriche palm, ''ité'' palm, ''ita'', ''buriti'', ''muriti'', ''miriti'' (Brazil), ''canangucho'' (Colombia), ''acho'' (Ecuador), or ''aguaje'' (Peru), is a palm tree. It grows in and near swamps and other wet ...
'') and ''
Euterpe oleracea Euterpe (; el, Εὐτέρπη, lit=rejoicing well' or 'delight , from grc, εὖ, eû, well + el, τέρπειν, térpein, to please) was one of the Muses in Greek mythology, presiding over music. In late Classical times, she was named muse ...
''. During the rainy season, the swamps are flooded one meter high. Little is known about the ecology of these swamps.


Municipalities

The most important towns are in the southeastern portion of the island: Soure, Salvaterra, and the largest city, Breves. They feature a basic touristic infrastructure and are popular because of the generous, lightly populated beaches. The city of Soure, on the island's Atlantic coast, serves as an entry point to the island via its ferry link to
Belém Belém (; Portuguese for Bethlehem; initially called Nossa Senhora de Belém do Grão-Pará, in English Our Lady of Bethlehem of Great Pará) often called Belém of Pará, is a Brazilian city, capital and largest city of the state of Pará in ...
. The island is shared by 16 municipalities of three microregions: * Microregion of Arari: ** Cachoeira do Arari ** Chaves ** Muaná ** Ponta de Pedras ** Salvaterra ** Santa Cruz do Arari ** Soure * Microregion of Furos de Breves: ** Afuá **
Anajás Anajás is a Brazilian municipality located in the state of Pará. Its population as of 2020 is estimated to be 29,688 people. The area of the municipality is 6,921.709 km². The city belongs to the mesoregion Marajó Marajó () is a l ...
** Breves ** Curralinho ** São Sebastião da Boa Vista * Microregion of Portel: ** Bagre **
Gurupá Gurupá or Santo Antonio de Gurupá is a municipality on the Amazon River in state of Pará, northern Brazil located near the world's largest river island, Marajó, 300 km upstream from the upper mouth of the river on the Atlantic coast. T ...
** Melgaço ** Portel


History

The island was the site of an advanced pre-Columbian society, the
Marajoara culture The Marajoara or Marajó culture was an ancient pre-Columbian era civilization that flourished on Marajó island at the mouth of the Amazon River in northern Brazil. In a survey, Charles C. Mann suggests the culture appeared to flourish betwee ...
, which existed from approximately 400 BC to 1600 AD. The island has been a center of archaeological exploration and scholarship since the nineteenth century. Scholars from the 1980s forward have divided the pre-Columbian period into the Ananatuba phase (c. 1100–c. 200 BC), the Mangueiras phase (c. 1000 BC–c. 100 AD), the Formiga phase (c. 100-400 AD), the Marajoará phase (c. 400-1200 AD), and the Aruã phase (1200-1500 AD). Since the 1990s, there has been debate over the origins and sophistication of Marajó's pre-Columbian society. Based on fieldwork in the 1940s and 1950s, the archaeologist
Betty Meggers Betty Jane Meggers (December 5, 1921 – July 2, 2012) was an American archaeologist best known for her work in South America. She was considered influential at the Smithsonian Institution, where she was long associated in research,Andes and that the society steadily declined until its final collapse at approximately 1400 AD, due to the Marajó's poor soil fertility and other environmental factors. Megger's hypotheses subsequently became associated with
environmental determinism Environmental determinism (also known as climatic determinism or geographical determinism) is the study of how the physical environment predisposes societies and states towards particular development trajectories. Jared Diamond, Jeffrey Herbst, ...
. Her theory has since been rejected, however, by the archaeologist
Anna Curtenius Roosevelt Anna Curtenius Roosevelt (born 1946) is an American archaeologist and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Chicago. She studies human evolution and long-term human-environment interaction. She is one of the leading American ar ...
, who re-excavated Marajó in the 1980s. According to Roosevelt, the Marajoara culture developed independently within the Amazon and featured both intensive subsistence agriculture and major public works. Roosevelt estimated that Marajó may have had a population of more than 100,000 people at its peak. The population lived in homes with tamped earth floors, organized themselves into matrilineal
clan A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clans may claim descent from founding member or apical ancestor. Clans, in indigenous societies, tend to be endogamous, meanin ...
s, and divided tasks by sex, age, and skill level. The arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century was catastrophic to the indigenous population of the island; 90% died due to high mortality from Eurasian infectious diseases; they lacked immunity against these diseases that had become endemic in Eurasian cities. In contrast, however, during the 1918–1919 pandemic worldwide of the Spanish influenza, Marajó was the only major populated area not to have any documented cases of the illness. The island is also the location of the Roman Catholic Territorial Prelature of Marajó.


References


External links

*
Marajó Island and Pará state at V-Brazil.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Marajo Landforms of Pará Islands of the Amazon River islands of Brazil