Where was the forest in the Upper and Norwest Amazon before the arrival of the Europeans?

Summary

This paper presents evidence that suggests a very different environment than the observed landscape tropical forest of today. A comparison of two regions, the white waters system of the upper Amazon river (region of Iquitos, Peru) and the black water system of the Mesay river drainage (Chiribiquete National Park, Colombia), illustrates the strong possibility that these areas were grasslands in the past. This is considered to be a byproduct of (consider using anthopogenic activities) human action between at least 500 BC to the European conquest in the case of the upper amazon and the commission of frontier limitation of Spanish and Portuguese territory in the case of the Mesay. These results are based on archaeological surveys, excavations, and GIS projections conducted over the last 20 years. The conclusion from this work questions the biological and ecological assumption of the temporal distribution of the tropical forest in Amazonia, proposing a model that accounts for the expansion of the forest to the present distribution.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Multidisciplinary Approaches to Amazonian landscapes

Keywords

Spatial Coverage