A BIT OF BIOLOGY 

The Guyana side of Mount Roraima is the Rupununi region, often called “the Land of Giants.” During the yearly rainy season, the Rupununi savannas and forests become wetlands, flooded by the mixing of tributaries from the Amazon and Essequibo river systems. The meeting of these aquatic species creates one the most diverse fish habitats on earth. The Giants are species at the top of these biodiverse and abundant food chains. 

AN ATOM OF ART

Although not the first, the most famous example of literary fiction inspired by Mount Roraima is The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. A runaway bestseller in 1912, this novel is the source of the many “lost world” and “land that time forgot” stories since then – in novels, comics, television shows, board games and movies, including the Jurassic Park series, Up, and the very first in-flight movie ever shown: The Lost World (1925)

Doyle imagined the mountaintop as the preserve of dinosaurs that escaped extinction, and other ancient life, including ape-like humanoids. Wikipedia article, "The Lost World (Doyle novel)"

 A GRAIN OF GEOGRAPHY

The “Giants of Guyana” are found in the savannas, forests, wetlands and waterways that surround Mount Roraima, which forms the corner where the borders of Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela all meet. This 2800-meter (9000 feet) -high tabletop mountain or tepui, a Pemon (Indigenous) word that means “house of the gods,” is virtually unscalable, and often wreathed in mists that give it the appearance of an island in the sky. Here’s a video of a climber on a tepui neighboring Mount Roraima: Climbing a Table-Top Mountain | Expedition Guyana | BBC Earth

 A HINT OF HISTORY

When you look at a map of South America, probably the first thing you notice are the outlines of countries. These borders were drawn and redrawn by European colonizers over the centuries, starting in 1498 with the landing of Columbus in present-day Venezuela, when he claimed the land for Spain. Columbus set off a race among competing European powers to claim territory and extract wealth from this “new world:” invasions by the Portuguese, French, Dutch and English all followed the Spanish. But the land was already home to millions, who had spread across the continent about 15,000 years before Europeans arrived. This video is a time lapse of the known history of settlement and conquest: The History of South America: Every Year

If you look at a physical map, you can see that the rivers, mountains, forests and plains divide the land quite differently from the political borders. These regions fostered diverse ways of life, based on local resources, whether farming and raising livestock (llamas, alpacas) in the savannas, hunting and gathering in the forests, fishing the rivers – and trading with neighboring peoples, near and far, by means of river “highways.” These hundreds of distinct groups are usually lumped together as “Indigenous South Americans,” meaning, they were living on the continent before European arrival in 1498. See Map of Indigenous South American Peoples

Today, the Indigenous peoples of the Rupununi region of Guyana, mostly of the Macushi, Wai Wai and Wapichan tribes, are the front-line defenders of the lands and waters where the Giants thrive. On the other pages of this website you can learn how we are using “social enterprise” to support the people, the place and the Giants. There’s also a video: 2 minutes about us

 A MORSEL OF MYTHOLOGY

Mount Roraima was the subject of awestruck myths long before Europeans arrived, and became, in literary hands, the focus of adventure fantasy and science fiction. See Wikipedia article, "Mount Roraima"

This video is about the mythological significance of mountains for cultures all over the world: Mythical Mountains, and here’s a gallery of other examples of sacred mountains.