Amazonia
The world’s largest tropical rain forest, the
Amazon, has often been referred to as a “false
paradise” inhospitable to human societies. New
research revealing evidence about landscape
manipulation and soils, however, suggests that
various ancient societies practiced relatively
intensive forms of agriculture. Thus, historians
can now study the variety and complexity of human adaptation to both the challenges and the
potential of the Amazon basin proper and the
surrounding regions.
A
s the largest tropical rain forest on the planet,
Amazonia holds a unique place in world history. A vast region that extends through present-day
Brazil and seven other South American nations (Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Surinam, and Venezuela) it symbolically stands for the
dominance of nature over humans and as a source of
still-unknown plants and animals. But in fact Amazonia has been an intensively managed, human-made
environment for many hundreds of years.
Early Settlement
Human occupation of Amazonia is much more ancient and more extensive than had once been assumed. By about 9000 BCE two lithic (using stone
tools) traditions had become widespread in Amazonia
as evidenced by stone implements, including arrowheads and edged cutting tools for processing animal
game and grindstones for preparing maize, found by
archaeologists. By 5000 BCE two more practices had
emerged. First, there is evidence that by 2000 BCE
groups on the Atlantic coast were using domesticated
plants, with maize use emerging in the Minas Gerais
region by about 1500 BCE. Second, current research
indicates that occupation of the lower Amazon began
around 10,000 BCE, and there has been a dramatic
discovery of ceramics from around 6000 BCE in a site
along the lower Amazon, making this the earliest example of pottery in the Americas.
Close examination of this early period in northeastern Amazonia, along the Guiana coastal region,
illustrates the close relationship between agricultural
adaptation to a complex environment and a resultant
development of appropriate lithic technologies. Transitions from gathering to the horticulture of certain
plants, particularly the ite palm (Mauritia flexuosa)
and the mora tree (Mora excelsa), as well as other utilitarian species, are directly reflected in the development
of the lithic repertoire. Although these subsistence techniques are theorized as being ancestral to the emergence of tropical forest horticulture in the region, the
developmental analogies are probably stronger with
the sambaqui (shell-mound) peoples of coastal Brazil
than with the occupants of the tropical forests because
their horticultural and foraging repertoires are quite
distinct. This suggests that progressive adaptation to
the complexities of the Amazonian environment was
a process repeated across the whole region.
Various ancient societies also practiced relatively
intensive forms of agriculture, evidenced by widespread landscape modification throughout Amazonia. In fact, it has been argued that the landscape of
Amazonia, as it is seen today and as it has been for
the last 350 years or so, is the historical product of
a return to a semi-wilderness as a consequence of
the colonial depopulation of the native inhabitants.
Moreover, the current evidence for the existence of
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Soil Holds Clues
“Submerged forest in the Amazon River.” From the
1875 edition of The Amazon and Madeira Rivers:
Sketches and Descriptions from the Note-book of an
Explorer, by Franz Keller.
prehistoric roads and causeways in both the llanos
(prairies) of Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela and
in the heart of Amazonia itself indicates that these
landscape modifications were related to the presence
of large and complex societies.
For example, recently investigated systems of extensive ridged fields and agricultural mounds along the
Atlantic coast of the Guianas underline how limited
knowledge of the “tropical forest” region really is. The
presence of complex agricultural techniques to deal
with the low-lying, swampy conditions in this region,
as well as the use of intensive farming practices from
at least 700 CE, shows how complex adaptations were
made to the variety of Amazonian environments.
Thus archaeological evidence also fits well with the
historical sources that report both significant population and a complex agricultural repertoire among the
indigenous groups.
Apart from this physical manipulation of the landscape,
recent research on ancient Amazonia has focused on
anthropic or anthropogenic soils (that is, soils whose
formation is directly related to human activity) and
trying to assess what kind of soils in Amazonia may
have been generated through human activities, how
widespread they actually are, and to what extent such
soils were intentionally fomented. The banks of the
main channel of the Amazon as well as of many of its
tributaries are replete with black earth sites, illustrating both the continuity and antiquity of human presence. The use of such sites for agricultural purposes
thus illustrates both sophisticated knowledge of soil
properties and systems of agricultural management
that were stable over many generations.
These kinds of soils, particularly terra preta
(black earth), which is black anthropogenic soil with
enhanced fertility due to high levels of soil organic
matter and nutrients, are common throughout Amazonia. This agriculturally valuable soil was created
either through direct agricultural fertilization or as
a consequence of intense human settlement, when
human waste materials enrich the soil with nitrogen. The historical evidence shows that there was
no one-to-one relationship between the presence of
agriculturally favorable soils and the past existence of
complex polity or an extensive cultural repertoire, but
the investigation of anthropogenic soils now provides
clear evidence that human occupation was not simply
dependent on supposedly conducive environmental
conditions, but also could persist in regions where
terra preta was formed, consciously or not. Recent investigation of the many well-documented terra preta
deposits along the main Amazon channel, as well as
along its tributaries, has thus produced important
and convincing data on the agricultural dynamics of
past human populations.
Agriculture and Diet
The addition of maize to modes of subsistence that
previously centered on palms and manioc, as well
AMAZONIA • 99
“Our first interview with Caripuna Indians—Madeira River.” From the 1875 edition of The Amazon and
Madeira Rivers: Sketches and Descriptions from the Note-book of an Explorer, by Franz Keller.
as the systematic exploitation of other food plants,
has also been the subject of study. But interest in
the advent of maize cultivation results from seeing
maize use as a token of social and cultural complexity, given its easy storage and high nutritional value,
and so evidence of its use in Amazonia, where the
use of manioc varieties is predominant in the historic
and ethnographic reports of aboriginal horticulture,
is especially significant. But this apparent predominance of manioc agriculture in ethnographic and
historical materials about Amazonia may result from
the way in which manioc use increased over the last
five hundred years as a result of indigenous access
to steel tools via trade with the Europeans. The use
of steel axes would have permitted much greater
clearance of forest for the forest of manioc, a root
that must be dug from the earth, than the use of
stone axes would have. As a result, and also stimulated by European trading interest in manioc flour,
there were distinct advantages for domestic groups
in opting out of the systems of intensive agricultural
production that sustain large civilizations. Consequently the dietary use of manioc, as opposed to
maize, may well have increased substantially during
the historic period.
Basic Questions Remain
The nature of these transformations over the last
five hundred years is critical to an understanding of
ancient Amazonia, but the sheer size of the region
and the lack of sociocultural continuity between
past and present society and culture, as a result of
colonial conquest and depopulation, make comprehensive study of the environmental history of
the region especially challenging. Many of the basic questions of Amazonian prehistory remain to be
addressed more completely, not least of which are
100 • BERKSHIRE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD HISTORY
those of the scale and longevity of human occupation. It seems likely that ethnography and history, as
much as archaeology, will continue to play a role in
the discussion of human adaptations to the Amazonian environment. Work in progress that emphasizes
ethno-archaeological techniques, systematic survey,
and interpretation of historical records, as well as the
deployment of new technical resources, such as geophysical survey, seems well positioned to do justice
to the complexity of Amazonian antiquity.
As these techniques are deployed and the database
grows, it already seems likely that issues of human
environmental adaptation will be cast in a different
framework to that which produced the idea of Amazonia as some kind of false paradise whose apparent
botanical bounty belied the actual poverty of its soils
for human usages. Already much of the work there
tends to suggest that Amazonia is too complex an
environment, and its human adaptations too various,
to be adequately characterized as either utterly unfavorable or uniformly conducive to human settlement.
The very uncertainties about the definition of an Amazonian region, discussed earlier, reflect the fact that
the conceptualization of Amazonia as a homogeneous
entity is in itself flawed. As debates about models of
the Amazonian environment are being replaced with
actual investigation of human adaptations through
time, researchers are in a better position to appreciate
the variety and complexity of human adaptation to
both the challenges and the potential of the Amazon
basin proper, as well as of the surrounding regions.
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Further Reading
the present: Anthropological perspectives (pp. 33–54). Tucson:
University of Arizona Press.
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neotropical historical ecology. New York: Columbia University
golden king—Anthropologies and archaeologies of Guayana.
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Tucson: Arizona University Press.