Home » Culture, history and religion of the Brazilian Northeast » Brazil’s northeastern subsoil has emeralds and archaeology

The underground of the northeastern hinterlands holds many treasures. Among them are emeralds, mined from depths of up to 150 metres.

There are also natural caves, where researchers have found fossils of prehistoric animals and traces of Brazil’s ancient inhabitants.

The subterranean labyrinths of the Sertões stretch for hundreds of kilometres and reveal an astonishing wealth of history and nature.

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Subsolo do sertão nordestino tem esmeraldas, minas, cavernas e arqueológia

Bahia’s underground has the largest number of caves in the country.

They are huge tunnels with sandstone formations and fossils of prehistoric animals. The cave’s inhabitants, the bats, rest on the ceiling in a place where they are well protected.

In places, the cave looks like a temple because of its astonishing beauty. “It has 28 kilometres of topography, but we already know a lot more than that and our generation probably won’t reach the end of this cave, which is very extensive,” says researcher Rangel Carvalho.

The researchers found fossils of prehistoric animals in the subsoil of the Northeastern Sertão. “Here we have a fossil of a deer. It’s an extinct animal that has been identified. It’s an animal that lived about ten thousand years ago,” explains the speleologist.

In Sergipe, on the banks of the São Francisco River, a museum houses relics from major archaeological discoveries in the hinterland.

The Xingó Museum has panels and backdrops with illustrations of the region’s first inhabitants painting cave walls and making cave inscriptions.

“What could be saved was saved. There were 36 archaeological sites found. What has been found already gives us an idea of the importance of this region in prehistoric times,” says Railda Nascimento Silva, the museum’s coordinator.

Ceramic objects, funeral urns and very old human skeletons have also been recovered and are being analysed at the Xingó Museum. “Among the skeletons identified during the rescue project, the oldest is probably around 9,600 years old,” says the professor from the Federal University of Sergipe.

The subsoil of the northeastern hinterland is also rich in mineral and precious stones. Descending through a hole dug into the raw rock, as high as a 50-storey building, you reach a lift that looks more like a shower from which water keeps falling.

The tunnel has electric lighting and a pump removes the water that rises from between the rocks. “We make a gallery, one metre high and two metres wide, lumber everything and enter here. This is where the stones are made. This is where you get the emeralds,” says a miner.

Using hammers, the miners search for the gems, but it’s not easy to find them. Many people depend on these mines. Even outside the mines, they search for a forgotten emerald in the rocks that have already been mined. “We have 9,800 people in the Serra da Carnaíba who live from mining. 9,800 people directly and indirectly that’s 60,000 people.

The beauty of the Sertão’s subsoil is its most precious jewel. Even underground in Brazil’s driest region, there is a treasure carved in every rock.

Brazilian prehistory at the Xingó Archaeological Museum

Discovered in 1991, the Justino Cemetery, located underground in the Northeast, with 188 human skeletons, accompanied by their ornaments and objects used in life, was the first major prehistoric remains found in the Lower São Francisco region, between the states of Alagoas and Sergipe.

It was the first sign that there was a real archaeological treasure there, which today forms the collection of the Xingó Archaeological Museum (MAX) at the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS).

When researcher Cleonice Vergner and her team were carrying out archaeological salvage work in 1988 at the request of the University by the São Francisco Hydroelectric Company (Chesf), they had no idea that years later they would find so many traces of Brazilian prehistory. The research began in the region that would be flooded by the Xingó Hydroelectric Dam, and then continued in the areas that would not be flooded.

“There is work for at least four generations,” says Cleonice. On the banks of the São Francisco River, in the lower region, only two of the 255 sites discovered have been excavated.

These underground sites in the north-east, known as Letreiros and Vale dos Mestres, produced the pieces, skeletons and ceramics that are now preserved and displayed in the museum, in a cooled and soundtracked environment, along with maps and miniatures that show how these prehistoric peoples lived.

The MAX logo, a drawing of a bird resembling a vulture, was also found in rock art sites, repeated in three different places. Between the plateaus and the terraces of the river, there are 41 sites downstream from the dam and 214 at the mouth.

The museum has a team of 43 people based at the Research Laboratory in Xingó and at the central station in Aracaju. The excavations are carried out by the community itself in the towns of Paulo Afonso, Canindé, Olho D’Água and Piranhas. “Only the people who drew the pictures weren’t illiterate.

We taught the others to dig and made them literate. Today, they are in further education, four of them have already graduated with us, and one of them has a master’s degree and is working with us,” says the researcher. “The project also had a social focus, involving the community. Today, the museum supports 217 people, including employees and their families”.

The Xingó Archaeological Museum is located in the municipality of Canindé do São Francisco in Sergipe, 200 kilometres from the capital of Sergipe (four hours by bus), and has been visited by more than 55,000 people in the last four years.

Emeralds, Mines and underground Caves in the northeastern hinterland.

Bahia.ws – Tourist Guide to Bahia and the Northeast of Brazil

Written by Willy Sievert

Editor of Bahia.ws since its founding in 2009. Based in Salvador, he travels frequently across the Northeast and all of Brazil to keep the guides up to date. Learn more about Willy Sievert →

Published on 10/02/2016 · Updated on 21/04/2025

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