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Itaipu Eco MuseumIn this charming museum of the city of Foz do Iguaçu and very near from the Iguassu Falls you can learn about the history of the region and of the Itaipú Dam. What we liked most is the history of the inhabitants of this region. History here is showed in a peculiar way based on the tools peoples of different times used, starting with old working tools and machinery used by settlers in the early 1900’s to the 1950’s exposed in the open areas of the museum and all the way back to Stone Age archeological evidence dated 6.000 B.C. of the first natives known to live there. Before Itaipu’s construction was started a complete archeological survey of the areas to be flooded was made. The gatherings and discoveries of this survey are contained in this museum and in a similar one located in the Paraguayan side of the Paraná River (which we explain in our Paraguay Facts page). Here’s a sample of what you can see:
At a time when there was no electric power supply (1900-1950), settlers used water wheels to power sawmills and grinding mills. The hidden power of water in a land blessed with many rivers, rapids and cascades was beginning to be used.During this period logging was the main activity of settlers and land won to the forest was used for tobacco and sugarcane production. Extensive cattle raising also developed. Back then wood was a cheap and widely used commodity in all kinds of constructions (homes, churches, bridges, tools, etc.)
Tobacco presses were introduced by migrants arriving here in 1940-1950. This particular tobacco press exposed in the museum is made of wood weighing about 400 kg ( 880 pounds) and could press 75 kg (165 pounds) of tobacco leafs at a time. The muscle of six to eight men was needed to use it.
These stone-cylinder and wood-cylinder mills were also introduced in the 1940-50s and used for the milling of sugarcane, corn and wheat.
Nowadays most of the land is used for soybean production in large properties using state of the art precision agriculture technology. From labor intensive old-time farming techniques and tools to present GPS driven computerized equipment and transgenic seeds, farming has changed dramatically in the land of the Iguassu Falls! The old water wheels of the past have been replaced with the largest hydroelectric dam in the world… Itaipú, a place you can also visit on your trip to Iguassu Falls. The museum of course has plenty of information on the Itaipu Dam to give you a grasp on the magnitude of this engineering marvel.
The Tupi-Guarani natives were there when Iguassu Falls was discovered by the Spanish explorer Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1542 (1541?) and by then they had been living in the region for a couple of thousand years. This explains why every place, every animal and plant here carries names in Guarani language. Except for this and some words in the Brazilian lexicon, Guarani influence in Brazil has vanished. But something completely different happened in the neighbor Paraguay. Knowing about the Guaranís is essential for the understanding of Paraguay and its people, but this is something we tell you about in our Facts of Paraguay page (culturally speaking, Paraguay is a unique and most interesting country, one of the least Europeanized).
The museum has a small exposition of paintings made by local artists; the one we loved most is the one with the Guarani children.Europeans tried hard to ‘Christianize’ the Guaraní natives, especially the Jesuits seemed to be successful when they organized them in the Jesuit Missions during the 1700s. The museum has a beautiful representation of a Jesuit teaching Guarani children in a badly illuminated (and surely hot and humid) classroom of those times. The Guarani children probably preferred having classes in the open as they were born naturalists. 
The museum has a reconstruction (with original archeological pieces) of a Tupi-Guarani burial. The burial of the dead by the Guaranis was made in two ways, primary and secondary burials. Primary consisted in placing the body in large urns in fetal position while the corpse was still warm. In secondary burials the body was first buried underground and when the flesh decomposed the bones were unearthed, cleaned and put inside an urn. Urns were usually closed and accompanied by offerings.
The museum has many more interesting things to show you that make it worth visiting and can be one of the many ‘extras’ on your adventure trip to the Iguassu Falls. To learn about other attractions in Foz do Iguaçu return from Itaipu Eco Museum to Facts of Brazil.
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