Welcome to the Jungle: Pre-Columbian Amazonia

This semester, I am taking a class called Historical Geography of The Amazon. Along with studying the ecology of the region, we have also been learning about the native peoples of the area and their history before the arrival of Europeans. Many people are aware of the Mayan, Incan, and Aztec civilizations, but they usually assume that the Americas were a vast wilderness inhabited by small bands of hunter-gatherers. Because these civilizations did little to contribute to the development of the modern culture, history education has frequently overlooked them. The general public assumed that these peoples lived in harmony with nature and did little to alter their surrounding environment. Many historians and anthropologists now no longer believe this is true. Based on archeological evidence, places such as the island of Marajò, at the mouth of the Amazon River, appear to have had a population of up to 250,000 people, suggesting that the Amazon was home to many more people than previously thought. (Michael Goulding, Floods of Fortune: Ecology and Economy Along the Amazon. New York: Columbia University 1996).
Originally, anthropologists believed that, due to the Amazon basin’s poor soils (most of the nutrients in the soil are leached out with the rainfall or are absorbed right away by the thick vegetation) and inability to support widespread agriculture, no cities or large settlements of people could have existed in the Amazon. Also, since the basin lacks rocks (useful for efficiently clearing forests), and plants and animals that are easily domesticated, anthropologists and historians believed that the Amazon was sparsely populated. Charles Mann, in his book 1491, wrote about the changing views and new discoveries in the Amazon. Archeologists have unearthed large areas of soils, called terra preta or Indian soils, rich in charcoal. The charcoal in the soil holds nutrients longer than the typical soils of the Amazon floodplain thus allowing cultivation. Archeologists have also discovered thousands of pottery shards mixed into these soils, suggesting that people manipulated the soil to grow crops, such as palm trees like the acai (the fruit of the tree is rich in nutrients) and manioc (a starchy root crop). A small group of people could not have produced such a large number of pottery shards. Only a highly complex and organized society based on intensive floodplain agriculture with specialized craftsmen would have been able to build up these earthen mounds. With plenty of different fish species and a variety of tree fruits and nuts, there was more than enough food and resources for large agricultural societies to develop.

“One of the biggest patches of terra preta is on the high bluffs at the mouth of the (river) Tapajòs, near Santarem. The terra preta zone is tree miles long and half a mile wide, suggesting widespread human habitation.”

The myth that American Indians, from the Amazon to North America, did little to manipulate their environment is slowly dissolving. It may become clear that vast complex cultures thrived across the continents just as they did in Europe and Asia. It is hard to develop an accurate picture of the Amazon when artifacts don’t survive long in the moisture rich environment. Diseases brought to the new world by the Europeans decimated the native populations, so their history and cultural traditions were lost. Charles Mann’s book, as well as work done by anthropologists and archeologists, shed new light on our old ideas.

For more information there is a good NPR interview along with an Atlantic article that gives more information about the Amazon floodplain before the arrival of the Europeans.