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 Island is separated from the mainland by Marajó Bay, Pará River, smaller rivers (especially Macacos and Tajapuru), Companhia River, Jacaré Grande River, Vieira Grande Bay and the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the ...

. From approximately 400 BC to 1600 AD, Marajó was the site of an advanced pre-Cabraline society called the Marajoara culture, which may have numbered more than 100,000 people at its peak. Today, the island is known for its large

water buffalo The water buffalo (''Bubalus bubalis''), also called domestic water buffalo, Asian water buffalo and Asiatic water buffalo, is a large bovid originating in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. Today, it is also kept in Italy, the Balkans ...

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 ...

'' tidal bore periodically exhibited by high tides overcoming the usual complex hydrodynamic interactions in the surrounding rivers. It is the second-largest island in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

, and the 35th largest island in the world. With a land area of Marajó is comparable in size to

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

. Its maximum span is long and in perpendicular width.

Geography

Marajó Island is surrounded by the following waters, which separate it from the mainland: *North: Vieira Grande Bay, the South Canal of the Amazon Delta (which separates Marajó from the island Mexiana) and the

*East: Marajó Bay *South: the headwaters of the Pará River and the Tocantins River *West: the

Jacaré Grande River The Jacaré Grande River () is a river in the Pará state of north-central Brazil. It is considered an extension of the Rio Pará distribution channel. The Jacaré Grande River rises on the island of Marajó in the delta region where the Amazon Ri ...

and the Companhia River, as well as a complex set of river channels called ''Furos'', including the Macacos River Channel and the Tajapuru River Channel The island is situated just south of the

Equator The equator is the circle of latitude that divides Earth into the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Southern Hemisphere, Southern Hemispheres of Earth, hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, about in circumferen ...

. Its Northern cost, which runs almost parallel to it, is called ''Contracosta''. Due to its location at the mouth of the Amazon River, archeologist Helen Palmatary compared the island to "an egg in the mouth of a snake". 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, a sustainable-use conservation unit established in 1989 to protect the environment of the region. Marajó is almost entirely flat. The island can be divided into the Western side with

savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) biome and ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach th ...

plains at a slightly higher elevation of around , and the Eastern side with

rainforest Rainforests are forests characterized by a closed and continuous tree Canopy (biology), canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforests can be generally classified as tropi ...

situated around sea level. The transition between both sides is formed by swampy fields called mondongos. Marajó is largely flooded during the rainy season because of higher water levels of the rivers along its coast and heavy rainfall in its interior. During this season, much of the island presents itself as a large lake. The largest lakes on Marajó are Lake Arari and Lake Guajará. 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 ''

'', a tidal bore phenomenon in the river that creates large waves reaching in height. It is a tourist destination, especially for

surfing Surfing is a surface water sport in which an individual, a surfer (or two in tandem surfing), uses a board to ride on the forward section, or face, of a moving wave of water, which usually carries the surfer towards the shore. Waves suita ...

of the bore.

Ecology

The eastern side of the island is dominated by

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

, 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 forests and small farms. Lumber and açaí palm are produced there. The island is in the Marajó várzea ecoregion, an area of seasonally and tidally flooded várzea forest. To the north of the large savanna area are palm

swamp A swamp is a forested wetland.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p. Swamps are considered to be transition zones because both land and water play a role in ...

s, mainly with Buriti Palm ('' Mauritia flexuosa'') and '' Euterpe oleracea''. 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 Salvaterra is a common toponym in the Galician and Portuguese languages. It may refer to: * Salvaterra, Pará, a municipality in Pará, Brazil * Monfortinho e Salvaterra do Extremo, a civil parish in Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal * Salvaterra de Magos ...

, 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. The island is shared by 16 municipalities of three microregions: * Microregion of Arari: ** Cachoeira do Arari ** Chaves ** Muaná ** Ponta de Pedras **

** Santa Cruz do Arari ** Soure * Microregion of Furos de Breves: ** Afuá ** Anajás ** Breves ** Curralinho ** São Sebastião da Boa Vista * Microregion of Portel: ** Bagre ** Gurupá ** Melgaço ** Portel

History

The island was the site of an advanced pre-Cabraline society, the Marajoara culture, 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-Cabraline 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-Cabraline society. Based on fieldwork in the 1940s and 1950s, the archaeologist Betty Meggers initially argued that the Marajoara culture had been founded by emigrants from the

Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...

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. Her theory has since been rejected, however, by the archaeologist Anna Curtenius Roosevelt, 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 Matrilineality, at times called matriliny, is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which people identify with their matriline, their mother's lineage, and which can involve the inheritan ...

clans, 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 disease An infection is the invasion of tissue (biology), tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host (biology), host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmis ...

s; they lacked immunity against these diseases that had become

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

in Eurasian cities. In contrast, however, during the 1918–1919 pandemic worldwide of 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