Location and function of the Caves and Eaves with Prehistoric Cave Paintings of the Kariwari

The caves and rocky eaves are located over the steep mountains of the Upper Kariwario zone and the eaves extend along the mountainous wall of rocks almost vertical. Accessing to the caves and these shelters is tremendously complex and some times one must go through narrow eaves that run parallel to the caves, and to reach them it is necessary to build ladders and balustrades from trees in the area. The most remote caves were to be found at a distance of six days by foot from Awim where their base camp was, and implied climbing 800 meters up an almost vertical rock outcrops, in which the only hand holds where the roots of the trees and some vines that hung from the cliff. Almost all of the cave are difficult to reach.

The significance and ritual usage of these caves and eaves

According to the oral tradition of the Yimas, all these cave are sacred places, related to their cosmological traditions and pointed at them as the specific place where, in virtue of the supernatural power of certain gods, the linguistic diversity that currently exists on the island originated. In front of it important masculine rituals were held until the decade of the 60s, to commemorate and celebrate this event (Ibíd.) A Gorecki and Jones say that:

"There was a time in which the landscape had not been shaped and human beings did not exist yet . The names and languages did not exist. There only existed two sacred bamboo flutes, one masculine and the other feminine that inhabited this cave. When the moment of creation came they molded the landscape, later human beings, but they were mute. To distinguish one group from another, these flutes with their music, they instilled different languages to the people and later placed them on specific territories in which each of them spoke since then a different language".

The archaeologists Gorecki and Jones inform us that such places were classified depending on their functions and usage. Some of them were used as simple camps or shelters, whereas others were considered sacred places to which non initiated people were denied access. Some of the latter, had certain trees and/or sacred plants which grew in the surrounding area or served, as in the case of Ti (cordeline sp.) and of bamboo to delimit the path that led to them.

There were two of the places visited by P. Gorecki and Rhis Jones, to which entrance was forbidden to all women and children who had not been initiated, and where extensive lines and stains were made with human blood. According to the ethnographic information obtained by Dr. Sullivan this was done in the context of esoteric masculine ceremonies in which man pierced the gland with a harp bamboo instrument and later doused the rock with this blood (Sullivan 1998) In another sacred cave explored by Dr. Sullivan behind the Awin settlement there also evidence found of similar ceremonies. There they explained to her that the Awin youngsters till recent times had bamboo canes inserted into their penis during the initiation ceremony and when these canes were removed blood sprang abundantly and then they had to dip their hands in it and leave an impression of the hand on the rock wall as a signal of bravery. (Sullivan 1998)

Dr. Sullivan informs us that another cavern full of skull; “was used as spirits' house or (House Tamberan) and that they were “trophy heads” obtained by the headhunters, who boiled them in mud pots to divest them of the meat and extract their brain, and that later this soup was drunk by the warriors." (Ibid.)