Colorants

The Arawak-speaking Saladoid culture, characterized by agriculture, ceramic production, and sedentary settlements, is thought to have originated at the lowland region of the lower Orinoco River near the modern settlements of Saladero and Barrancas in Venezuela.

Having at some point become a seafaring people, they migrate into and establish settlements in the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola between 500-280 BCE, displacing the pre-ceramic Ortoiroid culture.

As a horticultural people, they initially occupy wetter and more fertile islands that best accommodated their needs; they will eventually make up a large portion of what is to become a single Caribbean culture.

Their unique and highly decorated pottery has enabled archaeologists to recognize their sites and to determine their places of origin.

Saladoid ceramics include zoomorphic effigy vessels, incense burners, platters, trays, jars, bowls with strap handles, and bell-shaped containers.

The red pottery is painted with white, orange, and black slips.

Distinctive Saladoid artifacts are stone pendants, shaped like raptors from South America.

These are made from a range of exotic materials, including such as carnelian, turquoise, lapis lazuli, amethyst, crystal quartz, jasper-chalcedony, and fossilized wood, and traded through the Great and Lesser Antilles and the South American mainland, until 600 CE.

A distinctive form of Japanese calligraphy, the phonetic “kana” script, has emerge from abbreviation of the cumbersome usage of Chinese characters as phonetic symbols.

The first kana was a system called man'yōgana, a set of kanji used for their phonetic values, much as Chinese uses characters for their phonetic values in foreign loanwords today.

Man'yōshū, a poetry anthology assembled in 759, is written in this early script.

Hiragana developed as a distinct script from cursive man'yōgana, whereas katakana developed from abbreviated parts of regular script man'yōgana as a glossing system to add readings or explanations to Buddhist sutras.

Hiragana was developed for speed, whereas katakana developed to be small.

Kana is traditionally said to have been invented by the Buddhist priest Kūkai in the ninth century.

Kūkai certainly brought the Siddham script home on his return from China in 806; his interest in the sacred aspects of speech and writing led him to the conclusion that Japanese would be better represented by a phonetic alphabet than by the kanji which had been used up to that point.

The modern arrangement of kana reflects that of Siddham, but the traditional iroha arrangement follows a poem which uses each kana once.

Heian noblewomen develop kana into a respectable mode for poems, diaries, and romances.

Once the ability to compose short poems, written in a cultivated hand, becomes a requirement in Japanese social exchanges, major kana script masters, such as Fujiwara no Yukinari, emerge in the eleventh century.

Yukinari was the son of a courtier by the name of Fujiwara no Yoshitaka.

After the early death of his father, he had been raised by his grandfather, Prince Kanenori.

Yukinari has a fairly successful career as a court official, where he serves as a Major Counselor.

Yukinari further improves the Japanese style calligraphy (wayoshodo), and shows great respect to its founder, Ono no Michikaze (894-966).

He even mentions in his diary, Gonki, that he had a dream wherein he met Michikaze and learnt calligraphy from him.

Yukinari is known as the master of kana.

His style is mild and easily emulated; his lines are dainty and exquisite, resulting in highly elegant characters.

Fujiwara Yukinari is regarded as the founder of the Sesonji lineage of calligraphy, which will later become the leading tradition of wayo calligraphy.

His extant works are mostly written in Mana (Chinese characters used as units of meaning) in Gyosho or Sosho.

One of his most well-known works is the handscroll of Bai Juyi's eight poems from volume 65 of his Poetic Anthology.

He writes this masterpiece in 1018 when he is forty-seven years old.

The scroll is made by joining together nine pieces of specially prepared paper known as ryoshi, then dyed in light brown, claret, and other shades.

This handscroll will be treasured by Emperor Fushimi (reigned from 1288 to 1298), and the colophon over the seams on the back of the paper attests to this.

Currently, the scroll is stored in the Tokyo National Museum.

The Portuguese establish themselves on the Brazilian coast in their drive to control Europe's trade with India and East Asia.

They secure "title" to what will become eastern Brazil in their attempted division of the world with Spain in the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494.

During the next centuries, the Portuguese, Spanish, French, English, and Dutch will change the South American continent's trade patterns, which previously had been focused internally.

The Portuguese also may have known that western lands or islands lie on their side of the line.

On the modern map of Brazil, in the north the line cuts across the eastern end of the Ilha de Marajo, and in the south it passes through Laguna on the coast of Santa Catarina.

Because most of present-day Brazil lies to the west of the line, clearly the Portuguese expand successfully on this initial division.

The territorial aggrandizement, which is one of the main themes of Brazilian history, is both accidental and a matter of state policy.

Uncertainty as to the detailed geography of South America will persist into the twentieth century, so it is understandable that Portuguese officials will profess to believe into the eighteenth century that the estuaries of both the Amazon and the Rio de la Plata are on their side of the Tordesillas Line.

The two river systems are, in the words of the Jesuit Father Simao de Vasconcellos, "two keys that lock the land of Brazil . . . two giants that defend it and demarcate between us [Portuguese] and Castille."

Several centuries of penetration along these river systems will give Brazil its distinctive shape.

It could be said that today's Brazil owes its vast territory to the natives who served as skilled trackers, warriors, porters, food suppliers, and paddlers for the Portuguese expeditions, and to the natives whose potential as slaves lured the Portuguese inland.

Portugal, under the Treaty of Tordesillas, may exploit everything to the east of the line that runs from pole to pole 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands.

The exact reason for Portugal's interest in having the line so far to the west is debatable, but the Portuguese may have been trying to keep the Castilians away from the sure route to the East.

Very practically, the line's placement gives Portuguese vessels en route to India ample room to pick up winds and currents that take them around the southern end of Africa, a feat carried out by Vasco da Gama on his voyage of 1497-99.

Just as Portugal is different from the rest of Europe, so too will Brazil be different from the rest of the Americas.

Portugal is both an agrarian and a maritime monarchy that uses its control over land grants to discipline the nobility and its issuance of trading licenses to attract local and foreign investment in its overseas ventures.

The monarch, as merchant-king, supervises an economic system that imports timber, sugar, and wine from Madeira and the Azores, gold from the Guinea coast, spices from India, and dyewood and forest products, then sugar, gold, gems, and hides from Brazil.

These products are then reexported to Europe.

Just as native unrest aids the Spanish conquerors of Mexico and Peru, so too do the Portuguese in Brazil profit from arriving at a time of turmoil.

The Tupi speakers have been shifting steadily from the south in a massive migration to coastal areas, displacing the resident Ge speakers, many of whom move into the interior.

This population shift has triggered continuous warfare against non-Tupi peoples and against Tupi subsets.

It involves set battles that array hundreds and, in some reports, thousands of warriors in fierce hand-to-hand combat.

Some of the fighting goes beyond struggles over control of land or resources to vendettas in which captives are sought and in some cases reportedly cannibalized.

The Portuguese use these vendettas to keep the natives from uniting against them and subsequently to obtain slaves.

The conquest of Brazil is not a simple toppling of an organized empire as in Peru, but a drawn out, complicated process that spreads over huge distances, different peoples, and centuries.

Thus, it is not surprising that the Brazilian elites develop myths about racial harmony, peaceful change, and compromise that often have colored the interpretations of historians, thereby distorting understanding of Brazil's past.

The Europeans in Brazil take advantage of the cultural differences among the native peoples to pit one against the other and to form alliances that provide auxiliary troops in their colonial wars.

Portugal views the natives as slave labor from the outset.

When Portugal begins its imperial ventures, it has a population of about one million.

Indeed, in the mid-sixteenth century Portugal's population is so sparse that much of its territory is uncultivated and abandoned.

African and native Brazilian slaves become common on the streets of Lisbon.

Portugal's colonial economy in Brazil is based on slavery.

Initially, the Portuguese barter with the natives to bring brazilwood and other forest items to the coast.

However, when the natives accumulate all the tools and pots that they need, they show a lack of interest in continuing the arrangement.

Consequently, the Portuguese turn to violent persuasion.

The enslavement of the natives will shape much of the history that follows.

Seeking profits in Brazil, the Portuguese marshal native labor to provide exportable products.

The commercial objective that initially had prompted overseas operations becomes the first principle of Portuguese colonization.

Brazil is not to be a place where Europe's religious dissidents seek freedom of conscience.

Rather, to paraphrase historian Caio Prado Junior, the colonization of tropical Brazil would be "one vast commercial enterprise."

Colonial Brazil's reason for being is to supply dyewood, sugar, tobacco, eventually gold and diamonds, cotton, coffee, and later rubber for the European and then world markets.

The externally oriented colonial economy consists of enclaves that face seaward and that consider only their own commercial interests.