The Largest Sink Hole on Earth
By Charles Brewer-Carías
By Charles Brewer-Carías
The largest sink hole on Earth is at the Sarisariñama plateau in the Guayana Highlands of the Bolivar State of Venezuela, at 1350 meters above sea level. This sink hole or “Sima de hundimiento” is an inverted cone cavity 352 meters wide at the mouth and 500 meters at the bottom and is 350 meters deep, holding 18.000.000 cubic meters of air. This cavity is so large, that if a building like the Empire State Building of New York would be set inside,
it would not reach the edge, and from the bottom one can not distinguish the shape of the persons standing at the edge. The next largest pit or sink hole or cenote or Sótano is El Sótano del Barro in Querétaro, Mexico, with 15.000.000 cubic meters of space, and the third is El Sótano de las Golondrinas 500 meters deep also in Mexico. Others large holes are the 49 pits or gouffres discovered near Hanzhong in China and it is also important to mention the large Hang Son Doong cave in Vietnam, made popular because of the National Geographic pictures and it´s 70 meter high speleothems, the largest on earth, but it does not have any space as large as the Mexican or as the Sarisariñama Sink Hole.
This pit or Sink hole at Sarisariñama plateau was a great empty dome carved out by a subterranean river loaded with sand, millions of years ago in the crystal like very hard quartzite rock, and a final rock slide occurred when the key rock from this gigantic void dome sank in and collapsed. The other sink holes on earth were made by the dissolving action of the water in the soft calcareous rocks where they are. So this Sarisariñama Sink Hole is also the largest in a quartzite substrate.'’
This pit or Sink hole at Sarisariñama plateau was a great empty dome carved out by a subterranean river loaded with sand, millions of years ago in the crystal like very hard quartzite rock, and a final rock slide occurred when the key rock from this gigantic void dome sank in and collapsed. The other sink holes on earth were made by the dissolving action of the water in the soft calcareous rocks where they are. So this Sarisariñama Sink Hole is also the largest in a quartzite substrate.'’
Two New Plant Species Among Nearly One Hundred New Species Found At Sarisariñama
There were two particular new species of plants I recall from the 1974 expedition to discover the largest sink holes on Earth at Sarisariñama plateau
One, a slender Stegolepis that grew abundantly and only in the cliffs inside the pit, and I collected it while descending. This Stegolepis a Rapateaceae is endemic and very ancient (c.70 ma) origin, (before the Xhicolub impact), was identified as a new species and it was given the name Stegolepis brewerii by Bassett Maguire from the NYBG. Here are photos of my feet showing where it grew, a distant photo of my descent into the pit surrounded by this species and also one with red dots showing where this Stepolepis was attached to the rock. There are also two photos of the flowering plant to show its shape.
The other plant, Phainantha steyermarkii dwelled in the bottom and there is a picture when I collected it . This plant was named to honour Julian Steyermark, the main botanist that was in charge of our botanical collection at Sarisariñama in 1974.
One, a slender Stegolepis that grew abundantly and only in the cliffs inside the pit, and I collected it while descending. This Stegolepis a Rapateaceae is endemic and very ancient (c.70 ma) origin, (before the Xhicolub impact), was identified as a new species and it was given the name Stegolepis brewerii by Bassett Maguire from the NYBG. Here are photos of my feet showing where it grew, a distant photo of my descent into the pit surrounded by this species and also one with red dots showing where this Stepolepis was attached to the rock. There are also two photos of the flowering plant to show its shape.
The other plant, Phainantha steyermarkii dwelled in the bottom and there is a picture when I collected it . This plant was named to honour Julian Steyermark, the main botanist that was in charge of our botanical collection at Sarisariñama in 1974.
" The picture I took of my feet hanging in the void in 1974 shows the new species of a Stegolepis breweri plants named after me that I collected from the cliff right there. Another picture at the same moment taken from the opposite edge of the Sarisariñama sinkhole showed my descent procedure. The red dots identify some of the plants from this new species that were near me.- Charles Brewer-Carías
The Expeditions
No one knew about three large plateaus or tepuis at the headwaters of the Caura river (third main affluent to the Orinoco river), until, in 1838 the explorer Sir Robert Schomburgk, the orchid collector Eugene André in 1901, the ethnologist Theodor Koch Grünberg in 1912 and the cartographer Felix Cardona in 1937, identified as Sarisariñama and other similar names, the sandstone cliffs north of the Canaracuni river at the headwaters of the Caura river. More over, the perimeter of this and the others nearby were not known, because the same mountain was identified with names like Páuo, Jáua, Maraháno, Cácaro, Adési, Adáwa, Améha y Maravéni, in accordance with the view the explorers had while paddling along the Caura river.
But finally in 1972, some SLAR images obtained by a Side Looking Airborne Radar, allowed greater understanding of the topography of this region, and the three main plateaus that were hidden there by the clouds could finally be seen .
But finally in 1972, some SLAR images obtained by a Side Looking Airborne Radar, allowed greater understanding of the topography of this region, and the three main plateaus that were hidden there by the clouds could finally be seen .
Eight years before these SLAR radar images, we had been flying in the area while shipping on board a DC3 airplane some goods needed by Daniel Barandiarán, a friend and former missionary priest, who was starting a mission at Canaracuni, an indian village at the south cliffs of what would be known later as the Sarisariñama plateau.
During one of these flights over unknown mountains, with no radar of GPS to guide the pilots through, the sink holes were sighted for the first time and we estimated that the diameter of the main sink hole at Sarisariñama could be some twenty times the wing span of the DC 3 airplane. When we mentioned the sink holes to the Makiritare Indians that were at the mission, they told us that an old legend of theirs mentioned that there was a lake in those mountains where Orosha, the evil spirit dwelled in the underground. On Jan 4th 1965, I decided to climb the Sarisariñama mountain’s southern cliff, starting from the Canaracuni Indian mission, and after it took us a whole day to reach the summit, my two indian companions and I slept there. In the morning we investigated the possibility that in a future expedition, I could reach these sink holes from that place,but then I found out that because of the great crevasses and the distance to walk, that it would not possible. So I decided to find another way to reach the lake or what ever was in that place and discover it and to uncover the veil that had kept that secret since the beginning of time and to share that knowledge with the rest of the world. While returning from our climb I gathered several pineapple shaped plants that were common on the rocks and the botanist Julian Steyermark, with whom I would later share great expeditions, named one of these new species as Navia breweri.
During one of these flights over unknown mountains, with no radar of GPS to guide the pilots through, the sink holes were sighted for the first time and we estimated that the diameter of the main sink hole at Sarisariñama could be some twenty times the wing span of the DC 3 airplane. When we mentioned the sink holes to the Makiritare Indians that were at the mission, they told us that an old legend of theirs mentioned that there was a lake in those mountains where Orosha, the evil spirit dwelled in the underground. On Jan 4th 1965, I decided to climb the Sarisariñama mountain’s southern cliff, starting from the Canaracuni Indian mission, and after it took us a whole day to reach the summit, my two indian companions and I slept there. In the morning we investigated the possibility that in a future expedition, I could reach these sink holes from that place,but then I found out that because of the great crevasses and the distance to walk, that it would not possible. So I decided to find another way to reach the lake or what ever was in that place and discover it and to uncover the veil that had kept that secret since the beginning of time and to share that knowledge with the rest of the world. While returning from our climb I gathered several pineapple shaped plants that were common on the rocks and the botanist Julian Steyermark, with whom I would later share great expeditions, named one of these new species as Navia breweri.
Ten years later, from that climb at the Sarisariñama southern cliffs, and after having explored studied and discovered the Autana tower caves in 1971, at over 1000 millon years of age, considered the oldest caves in the world, I was assigned director of Scientific Expeditions of the Venezuelan Society of Natural Sciences, and thanks to the support of the Venezuelan air force that gave us the helicopter transportation needed, we organized the first multidisciplinary scientific expedition with scientists eager to collect plants, orchids, insects, frogs, lizards and birds at a completely unexplored mountain and at the bottom of those pits or Sink Holes.
Twenty expedition members, not counting the pilots of the airplanes and the helicopter crew, spent 35 days exploring and gathering information about the biodiversity on this mountain while a team of three, the English climber and writer David Nott, my brother Jimmy and myself, climbed down into the pit to explore and collect the botanical samples that sprouted in the shadowy jungle that filled the bottom of the sink hole, that seemed and was, completely different from the jungle that covered the surface of the plateau. We had already estimated that this was the largest sink hole on Earth.
What we did not know then, and it is explained in the many books and stories published afterwards, was the difficulty we would have in returning to the top and that we would also find at the bottom, the largest colony of Guácharo oil birds (Steatornis caripensis) believed until then to dwell only at the Guacharo cave near the town of Caripe in the norther east region of Venezuela, where Alexander von Humboldt found and described in 1800, these strange birds that only fly at night and guide themselves by ecolocation. As Steaornis caripensis, that had regurgitated hundreds of cubic meters of palm seeds that made a hill of movable pebbles outside the entrance of the crevasses where they nested.
Twenty expedition members, not counting the pilots of the airplanes and the helicopter crew, spent 35 days exploring and gathering information about the biodiversity on this mountain while a team of three, the English climber and writer David Nott, my brother Jimmy and myself, climbed down into the pit to explore and collect the botanical samples that sprouted in the shadowy jungle that filled the bottom of the sink hole, that seemed and was, completely different from the jungle that covered the surface of the plateau. We had already estimated that this was the largest sink hole on Earth.
What we did not know then, and it is explained in the many books and stories published afterwards, was the difficulty we would have in returning to the top and that we would also find at the bottom, the largest colony of Guácharo oil birds (Steatornis caripensis) believed until then to dwell only at the Guacharo cave near the town of Caripe in the norther east region of Venezuela, where Alexander von Humboldt found and described in 1800, these strange birds that only fly at night and guide themselves by ecolocation. As Steaornis caripensis, that had regurgitated hundreds of cubic meters of palm seeds that made a hill of movable pebbles outside the entrance of the crevasses where they nested.
This multidisciplinary expedition offered to the world of science, the knowledge of hundreds of new species that only lived in the summit of those three plateaus of Sarisariñama, Jaua and Guanacoco and the area of the Autana caves, explored before in 1971 and the region of Sarisariñama and Jaua plateaus which were decreed by the President as a National Monument and as a National Park respectively, in 1978.
From 2nd to the 13th of February in 1976, we returned to the Sarisariñama sink hole with a film crew from the Nippon Television Network Corp, directed by Jun-ichi Yaoi, and again from the 7th to the 26th of March 2002, we returned to explore the pit, accompanied by Mark Moffett from the National Geographic, the herpethologist César Barrio-Amorós, our pilot and fríend Federico Mayoral, my wife Fanny, my daughter Karen and my son John. So we opened a heliport and we all descended in a helicopter to the bottom of the Sarisariñama sink hole so a film crew of the NHK of Japan could make a film.
Published information
Barrio-Amorós, César & Charles Brewer-Carías 2008. Herpetological Results of the 2002 Expedition to Sarisariñama, a tepui in Venezuelan Guayana, with the description of five new species. Zootaxa 1942: 1-68. ISBN 978-1-86977-270-3 (Online edition).
Brewer-Carías, Ch. 1973. Proyecto de la Exploración de las Mesetas de Jaua, Guanacoco y Sarisariñama. Suplemento del Boletín No. 127 de la Sociedad Venezolana de Ciencias Naturales, Tomo XXX , Noviembre. Caracas.
Brewer-Carías, Ch. 1974. En Busca de los Orígenes. Recuento libre de ciertos procesos observados en algunas Islas del Tiempo. El Farol, Vol. La Calidad de la Vida, 1-El Ambiente Ecológico, pp: 18-23. Caracas.
Brewer-Carías, Ch. 1976. Las Simas de Sarisariñama. Boletín de la Sociedad Venezolana de Ciencias Naturales 32(132-133) pp. 549-624. Caracas.
Brewer-Carías, Ch. 1983. Sarisariñama. Editorial Arte, Caracas. 228 p.
Brewer-Carías, Ch. 2005. Reflexiones en la Sima Mayor de Sarisariñama.
En : Tepuy Colosos de la Tierra. Armando Michelangeli Ayala, Editor. pp. 293-297. Caracas.
Brewer-Carías, Ch. 2011. Las Simas de Sarisariñama, Una Isla en el Tiempo. Revista Rio Verde No. 005. Pp. 78-91. Caracas.
Nott, David. 1975. Into the Lost World. Prentice-Hall, Inc. 186 p.
Nott, David. 1975. Into the Lost World (Japanes translation) . Charles E. Tuttle Co. Inc. Tokyo. 253. p.
Nott, David. 1976. Descenso al Mundo Perdido. Monte Avila Editores, Caracas 134 p.
Nott, David. 1976. Descenso al Mundo Perdido. Circulo de Lectores, Bogotá. 207 p.
Roche, Luis Armando. 1975. “Como Islas en el Tiempo”. Documental en 16 mm de una hora de duración. También fue traducida al inglés y se consigue por AMAZON. ARSIETE. Caracas.
Smith, L.B. y J.A. Steyermark, 1967 "Dos especies Bromeliaceae Nuevas para la Ciencia" Acta Botanica Venezuelica, vol. 2 (5,6,7,8) pp 380-381. Caracas,. (Navia breweri sp. nov).
Steyermark, J. A. & Ch. Brewer-Carías. 1976. La Vegetación de la Cima del Macizo de Jaua. Boletín de la Sociedad Venezolana de Ciencias Naturales 32(122-123): pp. 179-405. Caracas.
From 2nd to the 13th of February in 1976, we returned to the Sarisariñama sink hole with a film crew from the Nippon Television Network Corp, directed by Jun-ichi Yaoi, and again from the 7th to the 26th of March 2002, we returned to explore the pit, accompanied by Mark Moffett from the National Geographic, the herpethologist César Barrio-Amorós, our pilot and fríend Federico Mayoral, my wife Fanny, my daughter Karen and my son John. So we opened a heliport and we all descended in a helicopter to the bottom of the Sarisariñama sink hole so a film crew of the NHK of Japan could make a film.
Published information
Barrio-Amorós, César & Charles Brewer-Carías 2008. Herpetological Results of the 2002 Expedition to Sarisariñama, a tepui in Venezuelan Guayana, with the description of five new species. Zootaxa 1942: 1-68. ISBN 978-1-86977-270-3 (Online edition).
Brewer-Carías, Ch. 1973. Proyecto de la Exploración de las Mesetas de Jaua, Guanacoco y Sarisariñama. Suplemento del Boletín No. 127 de la Sociedad Venezolana de Ciencias Naturales, Tomo XXX , Noviembre. Caracas.
Brewer-Carías, Ch. 1974. En Busca de los Orígenes. Recuento libre de ciertos procesos observados en algunas Islas del Tiempo. El Farol, Vol. La Calidad de la Vida, 1-El Ambiente Ecológico, pp: 18-23. Caracas.
Brewer-Carías, Ch. 1976. Las Simas de Sarisariñama. Boletín de la Sociedad Venezolana de Ciencias Naturales 32(132-133) pp. 549-624. Caracas.
Brewer-Carías, Ch. 1983. Sarisariñama. Editorial Arte, Caracas. 228 p.
Brewer-Carías, Ch. 2005. Reflexiones en la Sima Mayor de Sarisariñama.
En : Tepuy Colosos de la Tierra. Armando Michelangeli Ayala, Editor. pp. 293-297. Caracas.
Brewer-Carías, Ch. 2011. Las Simas de Sarisariñama, Una Isla en el Tiempo. Revista Rio Verde No. 005. Pp. 78-91. Caracas.
Nott, David. 1975. Into the Lost World. Prentice-Hall, Inc. 186 p.
Nott, David. 1975. Into the Lost World (Japanes translation) . Charles E. Tuttle Co. Inc. Tokyo. 253. p.
Nott, David. 1976. Descenso al Mundo Perdido. Monte Avila Editores, Caracas 134 p.
Nott, David. 1976. Descenso al Mundo Perdido. Circulo de Lectores, Bogotá. 207 p.
Roche, Luis Armando. 1975. “Como Islas en el Tiempo”. Documental en 16 mm de una hora de duración. También fue traducida al inglés y se consigue por AMAZON. ARSIETE. Caracas.
Smith, L.B. y J.A. Steyermark, 1967 "Dos especies Bromeliaceae Nuevas para la Ciencia" Acta Botanica Venezuelica, vol. 2 (5,6,7,8) pp 380-381. Caracas,. (Navia breweri sp. nov).
Steyermark, J. A. & Ch. Brewer-Carías. 1976. La Vegetación de la Cima del Macizo de Jaua. Boletín de la Sociedad Venezolana de Ciencias Naturales 32(122-123): pp. 179-405. Caracas.
Charles examins a Phainantha
"three climbers Jimmy Brewer, David Nott and Charles when we came out"- Charles Brewer-Carías
"Charles, Javier Mesa, and Mark Moffett, a National Geogaphic Photographer and ant society specialist in the 2002 expedition inside the pit."- Charles Brewer-Carías
" Federico Mayoral and Charles Brewer at the edge of the sinkhole in the 2002 second Japanese NHK television expedition" - Charles Brewer-Caría
Above photos shows the Guacharo face with a palm fruit, and jungle palms seeds, Click on the photos to enlarge.
" The main seeds in my hand came from three jungle palms that the Guacharo eats. The purple fleshy covered is from the palm Jessenia bataua the one with scales is Mauritiella armata and the one painted and not rough is Socratea exorhiza, plus a long nut from a fruit of the Lauraceae family ( the same plant family that of the Avocado ).As you may understand, because of the scale given to the seeds when compared with the hand and the then the size of the same nut in his beck, shows that this bird is big.. and terrifying noisy if you don´t know that they where there, flying in the middle of the night at the bottom of the Sarisariñama Sink holes." - Charles Brewer-Carías
Photo above shows Charles on a mountain of seeds from the Jessenia bataua palm (Seje) seeds
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