ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the indigenous history of Amazonia, a history that has been written by archaeologists, geographers, ethnobotanists, soil scientists, ethnologists and geologists, so it draws from diverse fields of inquiry and multiple lines of evidence. The historical ecology perspective allows for a portrait of indigenous history that is both fair and in line with the available scientific evidence. The chapter focuses on the cultural development of three main geographic areas in the last two millennia: the Amazon Delta, the lower Amazon, and western Amazonia. Among the Amazonian regional polities, power was based both on economics and on the symbolic manipulation of landscapes and subsistence resources. Human life in the moist South American tropics has been depicted frequently as a model of adaptation. The Tupian-speaking groups, whose probable origin was the upper Madeira region in Rondnia, were already established along the eastern coast of the continent, occupying Brazil from north to south.
