Further Reflections on Amazonian Environmental History: Transformations of Rivers and Streams

Contingent Diversity on Anthropic Landscapes

“…Hunter-gatherers have arguably altered Amazonian landscapes, though clearly not as profoundly as trekking societies [7][8][9] and sedentary horticultural societies [10][11][12][13], with the exception of the sambaqui and shell-mound builders of the Brazilian Atlantic Coast, lower Amazon, and Guianas, all of whom had disappeared long before the arrival of the Europeans [14][15][16], and the moundbuilders of Marajó Island, the earthworks of which are surrounded by inundated lowlands, on which significant populations both of people (needed for moundbuilding) and extensive areas of domesticated food plants with an intolerance for flooding, would not have been likely to coexist [17].…”

Terra Preta de Índio and Amazonian History

“…In addition, rather than reassuring the nature-culture divide, they proposed a more hybrid conception of a natural-cultural landscape. Their argument partially reflects the idea that nature is socially constructed as a discursive practice and that the separation of nature and culture is both historically and culturally particular to post-Enlightenment European thinking (Raffles and WinklerPrinks 2003). The use of nature, or natural resources, grew as a result of the demand for resources for production.…”

“…The backwardness of the people found in the Amazon was part of the European discourse when they first arrived. For a long time the Amazon was represented as a space of nature, rather than a space of society (Raffles and WinklerPrinks 2003). This representation, and the fact that studies on natural science receive more attention, could be a consequence of the understanding that the people of the forest were backward.…”

“…Despite the fact that evidence contradicting the dominant view set up by Steward and Meggers was available before the 1980s, it was only then that researchers began to voice more explicitly alternative narratives for the Amazon (Raffles and WinklerPrinks 2003). From the 1980s onwards, a growing number of researchers such as Raffles, Hecht and Posey, Balée, Denevan, Roosevelt, Smith, Demerritt, Haraway, Clement rejected the idea that the forest was pristine and that the population of the region had a passive role in their own history and in the history of the forest.…”

“…Painters also played a part in the reinforcement of this view, such as Catlin and Church (Denevan 1992). The writings of European authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries described the inhabitants of the Amazon as a society of nature (Raffles and WinklerPrinks 2003). Although the forest was inhabited, there was what could be called an insistence in seeing the native Amazonians as an embodiment of nature (Slater 1996).…”