Unknown Amazon edited by Colin McEwan, Cristiana Barreto and Eduardo
Neves, The British Museum Press, £17.99, ISBN 071412558X
FEW places on Earth excite the Western imagination like the Amazon
rainforest. Since the 16th century, Europeans have been impressed by its
vastness and rich diversity of fauna, flora and indigenous peoples. But all too
often, Europeans forget that they share these feelings of awe with the people
who live there.
This misconception is thoroughly dispelled by Colin McEwan, Cristiana Barreto
and Eduardo Neves in Unknown Amazon, which accompanies the British
Museum exhibition of the same name. Beautifully illustrated, its expert essays
explore the daily and religious life of the Amazon’s Amerindian peoples. Bizarre
human-shaped funerary urns from Maracá at the mouth of the Amazon, Carib
woven baskets that embody the makers’ world view and the earliest traces of rock
art all reveal the sophistication of the region’s prehistoric and more recent
inhabitants.
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One intriguing feature of the region is the vast extent of terra
preta or “black earth” that archaeologists and geologists now regard as
primarily of human origin—the result of slash-and-burn farming. This
indicates that many areas were densely populated during prehistory and that
today’s typically small and mobile Amazonian tribes are another consequence of
European colonisation and disease.
