Environmental determinism has a long history in anthropological studies since the nineteenth century. Scholars believed that races, cultural diversity, cultural stability and change could be explained by the environmental conditions under which these traits developed. In this view, the environment is treated as a given fixed context to which societies adapt or fail. In Amazonia, the limitations include soils, technology, protein, and catastrophic climate change. The main spokesperson of environmental determinism, Betty Meggers (1954, 1971, 2001) explained the presence of simple societies and relatively nomadic lifeways of Amazonian people in the historical and ethnographic accounts as evidence of environmental limitations imposed on human cultural development. According to her Theory of Environmental Determinism, societal development is encouraged or limited by the conditions to which humans have to adapt. In the case of Amazonia, the poor quality of tropical soils is said to have restricted agriculture to simple systems such as slash-and-burn (swidden) (Carneiro 1960; Meggers 1971). Adopting the idea from natural scientists and developers that the lush, rich vegetation of the tropical forests is actually fragile ecosystem growing on poor soils, Meggers (1971) coined the term counterfeit paradise to describe Amazonia.
Swidden is the most common traditional agriculture today, involving clearing isolated patches of forest, drying and burning the felled vegetation, and planting crops among the ash. Crops are rotated for several years and the field is abandoned eventually as weeds and secondary growth increase labor (abandonment was originally thought to be due to soil exhaustion). Over a period of 10-20 years, secondary forest covers the plot. Because the farmer clears and burns another stand of forest every 3-5 years, a large area is needed and settlements are frequently relocated; thus, slash-and-burn agriculture is assumed to support low population densities. Without large populations, surplus to support non-farmers and
Class stratification, and cities, Amazonia could never develop civilization. Environmental determinists also point to primitive technology as a reason for simple agriculture: the wooden digging stick, stone ax, and wooden machete.
Others examined the lack of animal protein as an environmental limitation. According to the Hypothesis of Protein Limitations, scholars proposed that the availability of protein determined settlement, population density, and inter and intra-societal relationships in Amazonia (Gross 1975). Unlike societies in the Old World, Amazonian people had few domesticated animals to provide reliable protein; and thus, they were assumed to have relied on unpredictable and easily overexploited hunting of wild animals. Based on ethnographic cases, scholars argued that typical settlement size, duration, and regional patterns could be explained by the lack of protein. In more extreme interpretations, Amazonian patterns of warfare, settlement spacing, and mobility, were explained by the fierce competition over limited hunting resources (Chagnon and Hames 1979).
Meggers (1979, 1995, 2001) proposes catastrophic climate change as a new element of environmental determinism to explain periodic settlement abandonment and changes in pottery styles in the archaeological record. She hypothesizes that cycles of mega-El Nino events throughout prehistory caused severe and extended floods and droughts that caused frequent societal collapse, encouraged nomadic patterns of settlement, and limited social development. Recent El Nino events have caused droughts and flooding in Amazonia, often resulting in large forest fires that have been exacerbated by uncontrolled development of the region. Pre-Columbian societies faced similar challenges and survived. However, the evidence presented for catastrophic climate change by mega-El Ninos and its impact on humans has been challenged (e. g., DeBoer et al. 1996; Erickson and Balee 2006; Stahl 1991; Whitten 1979).
Few contemporary scholars support environmental determinism. Carneiro (1960) points out that slash-and-burn agriculture under careful management can be highly productive, yield surpluses, and sustain large, sedentary villages of 1000 to 2000 people. Others highlight the importance of bitter manioc, a crop that thrives on poor soils and can be converted into a storable surplus as dry flour (Lathrap 1974; Heckenberger 1998).
In the 1960s, scholars documented intensive agriculture in pre-Columbian Amazonia including house gardens, river levee farming, raised fields, terraces, Amazonian Dark Earth (ADE), and anthropogenic forest islands (Denevan 2001; Denevan et al. 1988; Langstroth 1996; Lathrap 1970, 1985, 1986; Posey 2004). In contrast to low energy, extensive agriculture such as slash-and-burn, which requires long periods of fallow during which fields regain fertility, intensive agriculture, which has little or no fallow period and fertility, is maintained through inputs of labor and organic matter. Archaeologists and geographers highlighted the potential of farming river levees and banks when floods recede (Hiraoka 1985; Smith 1999). Raised fields, terracing, and ADE (discussed below) are capable of continuous, high yields and are associated with dense populations, large permanent settlements, and complex society (Denevan 2001; Erickson 2006; Lehmann et al. 2003; Neves and Petersen 2006; Valdez 2006; Walker 2004). These strategies take advantage of patches of naturally fertile soil and technologies of soil creation, transformation, and management and negate environmental determinism. Slash-and-burn agriculture depends on metal axes and machetes to efficiently clear primary forest. These tools were unavailable until after 1492 (Denevan 2001). PreColumbian farmers, using digging sticks and stone axes probably continuously cultivated fields and practiced agroforestry rather than clear primary forest.
In critiquing the Hypothesis of Protein Limitation, scholars noted that most groups studied as examples of protein limitation live inland, far from major water bodies and
Fish. In fact, Amazonian people were primarily riverine cultures and relied on fish and other aquatic resources as the main source of protein rather than game animals (Beckerman 1979). In addition to rivers and lakes, fish were systematically harvested in large numbers using networks of fish weirs (Erickson 2000). Furthermore, maize is a storable staple crop and provider of protein (Lathrap 1987; Roosevelt 1991) and other sources of protein were available, including nuts, fruits, and insects common in the humanized forests (Beckerman 1979; Clement 2006).
World History
