HUMAN OCCUPATION AND LANDSCAPE TRANSFORMATION IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON

Abstract

Despite the romantic common sense view of the Amazon forest as an uniform and pristine environment, its landscapes are characterized by both diversity and long coexistence with human beings. Employing evolutionary, historical, and social approaches, this article aims to characterize the diverse settlement dynamics in the Amazon landscapes, from the arrival of the first human groups to the present, in order to understand how social development and the advance of new technologies were responsible for landscape changes in the past, and how it happens today. Three distinct settlement dynamics were observed, considering different levels of landscape transformation, along with the historical contexts: (1) Dynamic of Diversification (9000 BC to 1600 AD); (2) Dynamic of Simplification (1600 to 1960 AD); and (3) Dynamic of Suppression (from 1960 AD onwards). Keywords: Amazon, landscape, human settlement.