Abstract
Despite being the subject of exploitation and theories since the discovery of Brazil, the Amazon still holds secrets. Anthrosols are spread all over the world, but there is something singular about the one found in the dense vegetation of the South American rainforest. It is precisely the unique features of this soil horizon that have triggered stimulating debates and revisions on the history of the Amazon. In this chapter a study of the terra preta de índio is conducted with the aim to explore the special quality of this anthropic soil horizon, and the changes that it triggers in the history of the continent and for Brazilian agriculture. This chapter raises the questions addressed in the subsequent chapters.
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Notes
- 1.
The nutrients are washed away.
- 2.
Terra preta de índio is a soil horizon; it is the superficial horizon on top of various soils. A soil horizon is the vertical section that, cutting from the surface, goes down until weathering, showing in most cases several horizontal layers parallel to the surface. Each horizon has different characteristics.
- 3.
TPI sites along rivers are normally larger and more linear than interfluve areas (Smith 1980).
- 4.
Terra mulata is a term coined by Sombroek in 1966.
- 5.
High cation exchange capacity is good because when chemical elements, such as calcium for example, goes into the soil solution, it is held by the soil and it does not go away. It works as a changeable storage place.
- 6.
- 7.
Higher than adjacent soils which are acidic. In the example given, the control soil (non-TPI) had a pH of 4.4 where the TPI had 5.4.
- 8.
Colour, pH, carbon, nitrogen, calcium (which can come from human and animal faeces, bones and other organic and inorganic residues), potassium, magnesium (the last two indicate vegetal ash), copper and zinc (mainly in urine and faeces, respectively, which indicate intense occupation or occupation for a long period).
- 9.
It is important to stress the research of Balée and Clement in the topic of cultural history and knowledge on anthropic soils. They have been conducting research on these issues for decades and have made sound contributions to the study of not only TPI, but also of the Amazon.
- 10.
The geographer Morse, for example, said that the soils were “extremely fertile” in 1809 (Kern et al. 2009).
- 11.
Ortom, J. The Andes and the Amazon 1875.
- 12.
Smith, Herbert. The Amazons and the Coast 1879.
- 13.
It is important to stress that the dark horizons were only recently considered anthropic artefacts.
- 14.
Faria (1946) is a defender of the natural genesis.
- 15.
The Açutuba site, for example, is by the river Negro.
- 16.
It is important to notice, however, that there is little information on how the charcoal is preserved in an agricultural field with frequent tillage.
- 17.
The Pronapaba was created by Clifford Evans, Betty Megers and Mario Simões in cooperation with many Brazilian archaeologists.
- 18.
For a list of the Museum group that researches terra preta de índio, go to http://www.museu-goeldi.br/pesquisa/ecologia/tpa/paginas_imagens/publi.htm and click on publication list.
- 19.
Zech, W. et al. Analytische Kennzeichnung vom Terra Preta do Índio. Mitteilungen der Deutschen Bodenkundlichen Gesellschaft [S.I.], v. 29, p. 709, 1979.
- 20.
Pabst, E. Terra Preta do Índio: Chemische Kennzeichnung und ökologische Bedeutung einer brasilianischen Indianerschwarzerde. (1985). 362 f. Dissertação de mestrado - Fakultät fur Geowissenschaften, Ludwig-Maximilian Universität, München, 1985.
Pabst, E.E. Terra Preta—Ein Beitrag zur Genese-Diskussion auf der Basis von Geländearbeiten bei Tupi-Völkern Amazoniens. 1993. 143 PhD. Gesamthochschule Universität Kassel, Kassel.
- 21.
Bates arrived in the Amazon in 1848 with Alfred Wallace and stayed in the forest for 11 years collecting data of more than 8000 species that was sent to the British Museum.
- 22.
Buffon wrote that the American Indian “was in himself no more than a first-class animal and, for nature, merely an inconsequential being, a sort of impotent automaton incapable of bringing her reform or succor.” (Euvres completes, VX: 443 in Descola).
- 23.
- 24.
In this text, Sombroek suggests that new information on soils of the region had become available and earlier statements were being refuted (Sombroek 1984: 521).
- 25.
Richter and Babbar (1991: 325).
- 26.
Needless to say, this is no longer the case. It is also important to highlight that Brazil is seen as an “agricultural superpower” and that in three decades the Brazilian Enterprise for Agricultural Research became one of the leading institutions in the world on tropical agriculture (Rother 2007).
- 27.
“The population density per unit area is a rough measure of the success of subsistence activities in the area, and it is correlated to some degree with cultural development.” Vol. 5 p. 655.
“From a technological and ecological point of view, the basic tropical forest culture is strikingly uniform so far as present data reveal.” Vol. 3 p. 885.
- 28.
In 1954, Meggers wrote, “The evidence suggests that the environment exerts an insurmountable limiting effect on the cultures it supports as long as it permits only a hunting and gathering subsistence pattern, and that this limitation extends to all areas of the culture, even those that seem remotely or not at all related to the subsistence requirements.” (1954: 807).
- 29.
Before Present (1950).
- 30.
David Maybury-Lewis wrote about his experience in the Amazon with the Sherente and the Krahó (1955–56 and a short visit in 1963) and with the Shavante (1958, summer of 1962 and a short visit in 1964).
- 31.
Marriage among the trio: a principal of social organization. 1969.
- 32.
The perspective of environmental limitation in the Amazon rainforest focused firstly on the infertility of Amazonian soils and then shifted its focus to lacking protein resources in the soils (Beckerman 1994: 178).
- 33.
To view critiques to Roosevelt’s work, see Viveiros De Castro (1996).
- 34.
In this article, Carneiro presents a critique of one of Roosevelt’s articles and he goes over the main thesis of his work.
- 35.
Meggers wrote, “Man is an animal and like all other animals must maintain an adaptive relationship with his surroundings in order to survive and although he achieves this adaptation principally through the medium of culture, the process is guided by the same rules of natural selection that govern biological adaptation.” Meggers (1971: 4).
- 36.
Although by Law these lands are for indigenous use, there is a history in Brazil of indigenous land being invaded, which creates conflict. One example is Raposa/Serra do Sol, an indigenous land for the Macixu in Roraima, Brazil. The land was demarcated and it was approved by President Lula in 2005. However, this demarcation has been contested by non-indigenous people and by the state of Roraima. The non-indigenous people, rice producers and cattle ranchers, disputed the demarcation and refused to leave their land. As with the demarcation of the indigenous land, all those non-indigenous people have to be re-settled. One of the problems was that most of the producers did not have land titles and therefore were not entitled to compensation. The situation reached a level of such tension that the federal government had to send in soldiers from the National Security Force. Another key case was the invasion of the Yanomami land by miners in the 1980s. There were reports of 40 thousand people invading the reserve, which had great impact on the indigenous population. In 2011, with the high price of gold in the international market, people feared that same situation would happen because invasions were already being reported. Source: http://www.ipam.org.br/mais/noticiasitem?id=1389.
- 37.
This is not to say that I am defending the view of the indigenous population as natural conservationists, a very romantic view. The argument is that indigenous people do have knowledge regarding the forest that can be less destructive than the ones pursued by those outside the forest.
- 38.
It is important to stress that the first written records are from these dates, but some people believe it occurred before then.
- 39.
Animals as well as humans carry disease. Besides all the diseases brought by the Europeans—smallpox, influenza, measles—there were also the diseases carried by animals. In Europe human beings were accustomed to be around animals such as horses and pigs, but that was not the case with the indigenous population. Mann (2005) discusses an episode in Southern United States in which it is argued that pigs were a source of contamination of zoonotic diseases, such as anthrax, brucellosis, leptospirosis, trichinosis and tuberculosis (Mann 2005: 109).
- 40.
It is worth pointing out that this site was not in a good state of preservation, which means we must take this information with care. New excavations are needed to confirm it.
- 41.
- 42.
Roosevelt is an important actor in Brazilian archaeology as she certified that ceramic production in the lower Amazon in the 8th millennium bp (Neves 1998: 2). She was not the first to suggest that date, but she received wide recognition for her work, which was published in detail. The evidence acquired by her work pushed the chronology of the Amazon rainforest to the 11th millennium bp.
- 43.
“The policroma ceramics are marked by the decoration in red, burgundy, orange and black over a white base. Similar to the ceramic from the Marajoara phase, the policroma ceramic are decorated with modelated, incision, excision, etc.” (Neves 2006: 61).
- 44.
Regarding this argument, one interesting question is why people do not apply this argument to civilisations from other rivers, such as the Nile River or the Yellow River, or the Euphrates River. Why is this only used in the context of the Amazon?
- 45.
One would have to include clear water rivers in this division, making that a threefold division of rivers.
- 46.
The vision of the Amazon with poor soils that cannot hold cultivation for more than one or two years resembles more the reality in back water rivers (Moran 1993: 36).
- 47.
Diegues makes a bridge between the vision of the Amazon as untouched and the establishment of parks with no human habitants in them (Diegues 1997: 316).
- 48.
That is not to say that agriculture became more productive. Denevan (2009) argues that there was an involution after the introduction of metal axes, and that agriculture before the Europeans was more intensive and more productive.
- 49.
Redford goes on to say that by seeing the indigenous population as noble savages, living in harmony with nature and with the knowledge that we need to survive in a world with an environmental crisis puts a lot of pressure on these communities. “The future”, he goes on, “is on a mosaic of different information from different places. One of them is traditional knowledge.”
- 50.
Cronon said that the wilderness was linked to romanticism and to the idea of a frontier.
- 51.
In this case the West includes Europe and the United States and not the countries that are geographically in the west of planet Earth.
- 52.
See, for example, Shetler, 1991. Three Faces of Eden. In Seeds of Change: A Quincentennial Commemoration, ed. H.J. Viola and C. Margolis. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
- 53.
By positive I mean increasing the richness and equitability of nature through enhancing biodiversity (Balée and Erickson 2006: 4).
- 54.
Balée presents four postulates for historical landscape: human activity has affected a great part of the globe; there is no predetermination to either conservation or destruction; the pathway of landscape is historically contingent; humans and the landscape that was created by their activities cannot be seen as separate from one another.
- 55.
Research on pollen and phytoliths, for example, are carried out to help reconstruct plant use in the past.
- 56.
It is important to stress that biochar is a soil amendment, not a soil fertiliser.
- 57.
This data refers to the vegetation in 1990.
- 58.
Sustainable is very tricky word, and it must be used carefully. In this sense, sustainable refers to the ability of a soil to produce harvest. That does not mean that the farmer will profit from what he/she has produced, the point here is that there will be a production and it will be sustained through time.
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Bezerra, J. (2015). Terra Preta de Índio and Amazonian History. In: The Brazilian Amazon. World Forests, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23030-6_2
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