ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN CAVES HELPS GEOLOGY: FAR FROM RHETORIC, CLOSER TO REALITY

Most current people use caves for different activities such as adventure, entertainment, recreation, religion, sports, tourism more than scientific research. Scientists have mentioned that caverns must be used for scientific advance through archaeological, anthropological, biological, environmental, geological, geophysical, hydrogeological, sociological, speleological, thermodynamics, and more investigations.

During a literature review searching for calcareous rocks in North, Central, and South American countries in order to corroborate an unconformity between Triassic-Jurassic and Cretaceous for a tectonic research; it found important information from several archeological researches.

As a result, the majority of ancient human being groups in Middle and South America had used caves for diverse targets such as audiences and other public congregations, astronomical observatory, cemetery, commercial storage, dormitory, entrance to the underworld, festival and large-scale feasting, material extraction, ritual ceremony place, workplace, and more.

In conclusion this research found that following archaeological researches published on areas where ancient people admired caves, we can find geological information. For example, the review was about Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republican, Uruguay (in karst and sandstone caves). Also, Chile and Nicaragua (volcanic caves), where it is easy to find presence of some geological formations; however, there are few systematic scientific works focused in order to know some ethnic groups prior to the arrival of the Spaniards. Natives abandoned in their caves some pottery artifacts, incense burners, masks, tools, instruments, among others that archeologists seek and report offering to geologists the location of karst, sandstone and volcanic caverns if natives had used as permanent or temporal refugee. Also, cave paintings or petroglyphs, which you find inside the cave. Usually, we can see pictographs on the rocky walls.

As geologists, we can visit these caverns and prepare investigations regarding climate, hydrogeology, and more.