Nide Guin, a Brazilian archaeologist whose work poses doubts long-standing theories about how humans first lived in the Americas, transforming the Hard Scrabble region of northeastern Brazil into Serra da Capybara National Park, nearly alone, and died Wednesday at his home near the park in Saint-Rymande Nohto. She was 92 years old.
Park director Marian Rodriguez said the cause was a heart attack.
Dr. Gidon was best known in the international scientific community due to her contested discovery that humans had arrived in America perhaps over 30,000 years ago. But few people questioned her accomplishments in tracking and preserving millions of years old rock paintings in Piau's semi-arid, cactus-studded poor horns.
In 1979, her claims, the Brazilian government declared that the area became a national park, and in 1991, the UNESCO UN Cultural Organization became a World Heritage Site, primarily for her. She later contributed to the creation of two nearby museums. With the American Museum, which opened in 1996 and the Natural Museum in 2018, she played a very important role in attracting investment in the town, leading to a new airport and a federal university campus, significantly improving public education in the area.
“The best way to preserve paintings was to provide resources to people to preserve their surroundings and to preserve their surroundings,” said Antoine Lourdes, a French archaeologist who worked with Dr. Guidon in 2006 for about a decade, in an interview. “I don't think most archaeologists are aware of the social meaning of their work.”
Dr. Gidon was particularly effective in training and hiring women in areas where men are shaking and domestic violence is common, said Adriana Abujamula, author of Dr. Guidon's 2023 biographies. “I have heard many touching testimonies from women who gained financial autonomy and sent men to hell,” she said.
Apart from working in parks and museums, as guides and security guards, many locals produce honey and ceramics sold nationwide through an initiative launched by Dr. Guidon in the 1990s.
Nide Gidon was born on March 12, 1933 in Hau, a small city in the province of Sao Paulo. Nade is a popular Brazilian name, but Nide is not. Her father's family side is French and she is named after the River Need, which runs through France and Germany.
After studying natural history at the University of Sao Paulo and studying natural history, equivalent to a bachelor's degree in 1958, Guyn got a job as a teacher that year in a small Roman Catholic town in Itapolis. However, after denounced the magazine Sao Paulo for corruption within the school in early 1959, the town where school administrators layed eggs opposed her.
As a single woman who drove cars, skipped the public and taught evolution, she was mostly a simple target for conservative Itapolis. Tensions rose and after violent protests, she and two other female teachers fled and were escorted by police.
“All that was missing to complete the medieval scene was a bonfire to burn witches,” she told reporters at the time, according to the 2024 podcast on her life.
Later that year, she got a job at the Paulista Museum in Sao Paulo, and became interested in archaeology. At the photo exhibition, she showed visitors from northeastern Brazil, northeastern Brazil, photographs of Piaui's paintings.
But not for a while. Her first attempt at seeing them in 1963 failed when the collapse of the bridge prevented her from accessing the area. The following year, after she fled from Brazil to Paris, she would soon be arrested by a new military dictatorship.
She studied archaeology in France and received her PhD from the University of Paris in 1975, but frequently returned to Brazil for fieldwork. In 1970, Dr. Guidon was finally able to visit Piaui's Rock Paintings. Surprised by their complexity, she began visiting regularly and organising teams for days-consuming trekking over difficult terrain to catalogue hundreds of archaeological sites.
She returned to Brazil in 1986 and six years later moved to San Raimundo Nond, where she was known around town as a “duta” or doctor.
In the 1990s, excavations near the painting site discovered materials containing carbon – carbon remains from the laboratory, 30,000 years ago. Dr. Gidong was surprised. However, other scientists were extremely skeptical. In particular, scientists from the US who adhered to the Clovis model, named after the archaeological location of New Mexico, supported evidence that humans likely arrived in the Americas 13,000 years ago by crossing the land bridge, which is now the Bering Strait.
Scientists now generally agree that humans arrived on the North American continent thousands of years ago, but Dr. Guidon's findings are still controversial. The question remains whether material excavated near the painted area was created by humans or by the forces of nature.
However, her work brings attention, money and resources to Piau, and even some of her academic critics acknowledge her achievements.
“She was a politician with a sense of purpose who knew how to persuade people,” said Andre Strauss, an archaeologist at the University of Sao Paulo. He doubted some of Dr. Guidon's findings, but still praised her charisma. Like Churchill, she had the talent of dramatic people. Abu Jamrah's biography suggests that she threatens to return by cramming herself into a more refined life she led in Paris as academics.
But she never did. On the morning of June 5th, she was buried in the garden outside the house of Sunrai Mundonnoth.
