A NEW exhibition exploring the links between ancient south American Indian cultures and the Caribbean has opened at the Horniman museum.

The year-long exhibition, Amazon to Caribbean: Early Peoples of the Rainforest was launched last week.

The museum's curator Dr Hassan Arero had travelled to Guyana and spent time with the WaiWai people to research the exhibition.

The WaiWai live in a rainforest village of 200 inhabitants called Masakenyari, which translates as mosquito village.

WaiWai chief councillor Cemci Sose flew to the UK to open the exhibition last week. Wearing ceremonial feathered ornaments he gave a traditional blessing.

Also helping launch the edxhibition was Guyanese-born Baroness Amos and celebrated explorer and botanist Nicholas Guppy.

Baroness Amos said: "This exhibition provides us with important links to the diversity of our society."

Guppy provided the museum with hundreds of artefacts from his rainforest expeditions during the 50s and 60s, some of which form part of this display.

Dr Arero said: "I wanted to find out if there were ways of using the ethnographic, archaeological and contemporary artefacts in the Horniman collection to tell a wider story of the cultural links between Caribbean and mainland South America.

"My focus was on Guyana, the only English-speaking country in South America, which represents a point of confluence between the Caribbean and South American cultures."

He joined in activities with the WaiWai, fishing in the Essequibo River and helping build a women's craft centre.

Dr Arero found contemporary artists in Guyana and the Caribbean islands are influenced by historic south American Indian cultures, such as the Arawak people.

One such leading artist is Oswald Hussein. One of his works, a specacular hanging, forms the centrepiece at the exhibition entrance.

The exhibition features historic and contemporary arts, crafts and ceramics and ceremonial jewellery, costumes and weaponry, as well as tools such as intricately decorated cassava graters.

Dr Arero said: "After a moving farewell, I left wondering how the village would cope with the increasing challenges to their co-operative and traditional ways of Amerindian life.

"I knew from observing the youth change was inevitable, but hoped such change need not eclipse the WaiWai's sustainable and unique way of life."

Now until October 2006, Amazon to Caribbean: Early Peoples of the Rainforest, Horniman Museum, London Road, Forest Hill, admission free, 020 8291 8690.