CHILDREN IN THE CAVE: INCLUDING THE BIOCULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE SCHOOL

Abstract

This paper describes a biocultural heritage project, carried out from an educational approach, in the altiplano of Argentina. In the town of Barrancas, at 3800 meters above sea level, the girls, boys, teachers, and the headmistress of the school, Abdon Castro Tolay, went out to interact with an ancestral space with valuable cave paintings: the "caravaner's cave." The girls and boys interpreted possible messages left by their ancestors in the art of the cave, experimented with cave painting techniques on rocks in the classroom, and decided and agreed on heritage conservation strategies, with a poster of their authorship. This montology learning based on interaction with a cave with ancestral environmental information, made it possible to achieve attitudes of recognition of one's own ethnicity and biocultural heritage.