Serra da Capivara National Park, National park in Piauí, Brazil
Serra da Capivara National Park is a protected area of about 129,140 hectares in southeastern Piauí, Brazil. It holds reddish-brown sandstone cliffs and pillars with horizontal banding, rising in rows and clusters above valley floors covered with green caatinga vegetation. The park contains around 400 catalogued archaeological sites, many in rock shelters.
The park was created by decree 83,548 on 5 June 1979 to protect the prehistoric sites, largely through the work of archaeologist Niède Guidon. UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 1991, and it was listed by IPHAN in 1993. At Toca do Boqueirão da Pedra Furada, 63 carbon-14 dates span 59,000 to 5,000 years BP.
The name Serra da Capivara means "Capybara Hills". Rock art covers the sandstone overhangs, and at Toca do Sítio do Meio excavators found pottery fragments about 8,960 years old, among the oldest in the Americas. The park's roughly 400 catalogued sites include rock shelters used as dwellings, camps and burial places.
Access to the park is through São Raimundo Nonato municipality, where guides lead tours to the archaeological sites and geological formations. The best time to visit is between June and December, when temperatures are slightly cooler and trails remain drier.
Local capuchin monkeys demonstrate advanced tool usage by cracking nuts with stones, displaying complex foraging strategies passed down through generations. The monkeys carefully select flat stones as anvils and heavy pebbles as hammers to open the hard shells.
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