This paper aimed at gathering and making available information on the Amazonian ichthyfauna according to several writings of the 16th to the 17th century. Documental sources from many libraries and archives were consulted, and the species mentioned in the selected documents were taxonomically identified. Also, observations based on available textual and iconographical references were made so as to add zoologically relevant information. It was realized that, due to the then prevailing definition of the concept of "fish", a study of ichthyology in that period must include also data on species belonging to taxa other than lampreys, hagfishes, elasmobranchs and teleosts. At the beginning ot the colonial period, the concept of fish was simply generalized as meaning fishery resources, and there was no much interest in drafting checklists of the New World fish fauna. Later, some of the incoming visitors. set themselves to describe and illustrate the fish fauna more specifically: in this phase when fish species were described in fuller detail, three works are outstanding: the text attributed to Fr. Cristóvão de Lisboa (1625-1631), the codex by Antonio Giuseppe Landi (1772) and especially the manuscript by Fr. João Daniel (1758-1776) who was found to be a pioneer of conservationism in Amazonia. Overall, the visitors who carne to the region lacked a specific academie background and, as they served to various tasks other than Science, they did not follow a methodology that could be called scientific. Because their manuscripts were not made public or even printed, for several reasons, the knowledge they produced was not cumulative, let alone analytical, and had no significant influence on the development of Ichthyology. On the other hand, naturalists who in fact did not come to Amasonia could make a stronger contribution, by consolidating the knowledge obtained from mainly the work of Georg Marcgrave (1648) and from specimens collected in Dutch colonies in South America, and by including it in a great classification system that would later rekindle the interest of other scientists in studying the Amazonian fish fauna.
|
