The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The basin covers an area of about 2,700,000 square miles or approximately 35.5 percent of the South American continent. Most of the basin is covered by the Amazon rainforest, also known as Amazonia.
The Amazon Basin spans nine countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela, and French Guiana.
How big is it?
Measuring 2.1 million square miles, the Amazon represents over half the earth’s remaining tropical rainforests. With an estimated 390 billion individual trees and approximately 16,000 species, this is also the most biodiverse tract of tropical rainforest in the world. The majority of the forest lies in Brazil (60%), followed by Peru (13%) and Colombia (10%). Minor amounts may also be found in Bolivia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, and Venezuela.
How old is it?
The rainforest has been in existence for at least 55 million years. Archaeological evidence from an excavation at Caverna da Pedra Pintada, estimates that human inhabitants first settled in the region at least 11,200 years ago. Currently, more than 30 million people from 350 different ethnic groups live in the Amazon. The rainforest is massive, spanning nine countries and 3, 344 formally acknowledged indigenous territories. Indigenous peoples make up 9% of the total population, and 60 of the groups remain largely isolated.
Were there inhabitants?
The first European to travel the length of the Amazon River was Francisco de Orellana in 1542. Instead of pristine wilderness, to his surprise, he found a flourishing, complex Pre-Colombian civilization. It is believed the same civilization was later devastated by the spread of diseases from Europe, such as smallpox. Since the 1970s, numerous geoglyphs dating back to AD 1-1250 have been discovered on deforested land. These findings confirm suspicions of Pre-Columbian civilizations.
The BBC’s Unnatural Histories presented evidence that the Amazon rainforest has been shaped by man for at least 11,000 years through practices such as forest gardening and terra preta. Terra preta is now widely accepted as a product of indigenous soil management allowing agriculture and silviculture.
In the region of the Xingu tribe, evidence of large settlements, such as roads, bridges and plazas were discovered in 2003. Further evidence of habitation was documented by early missionaries to the region. The tribes of the Jivaro, including the Shuar, had been described as practicing headhunting for trophies and headshrinking. Missionaries also reported constant infighting in the Yanomani tribes on the borders of Brazil and Venezuela. It was reported that more than a third of Yanomamo males, on average, died as a result of warfare. The Munduruku were another warlike tribe that inhabited the basin. They expanded along the Tapajós river and its tributaries and in the early 19th century, they were pacified and subjugated by the Brazilians.
Are there still uncontacted tribes?
It is quite possible that there remain undocumented tribes in the region. In 1961, British explorer Richard Mason was killed by the Panara, a previously uncontacted tribe. Then in 1969, the Matsés made their first permanent contact with the outside world. Prior to that time, they were effectively at war with the Peruvian government.
Fast Facts:
The Sahara Desert fertilizes the Amazon
More than 56% of the dust fertilizing the Amazon rainforest comes from the Bodélé depression in Northern Chad in the Sahara desert.
It houses the largest collection of living organisms in the world
One in ten known species in the world lives in the Amazon rainforest. This constitutes the largest collection of living plants and animal species in the world.
The region is home to about 2.5 million insect species, tens of thousands of plants, and some 2,000 birds and mammals. To date, at least 40,000 plant species, 2,200 fishes, 1,294 birds, 427 mammals, 428 amphibians, and 378 reptiles have been scientifically classified in the region. One in five of all bird species are found in the Amazon rainforest. One in five species of fish also live in Amazonian rivers and streams. Scientists have described between 96,660 and 128,843 invertebrate species in Brazil alone
It is constantly threatened
The biodiversity in the Amazon is becoming increasingly threatened, primarily by habitat loss from deforestation as well as increased frequency of fires. Over 90% of Amazonian plant and vertebrate species (13,000–14,000 in total) may have been impacted to some degree by fires.
What was the rubber boom?
Natural rubber had been used by the people of Mesoamerica for centuries. The Olmec, Maya, and Aztec peoples were the first to discover it, possibly as early as 1600 BCE. Rubber was used for many purposes, including waterproofing containers, clothing, bags and shoes and making balls for recreation or ceremonial purposes.
The ancients were masters of rubber making
The temple complexes of Tikal, Palenque or Chichen Itzas, for example, have images of ball games engraved into the stelae and buildings. These ritual games were played with balls made of solid rubber or the sap of the caoutchouc tree. The word “caoutchouc” originated from the languages of the Tupi and Quechua Indians, roughly translated means “tears of the tree” or “bleeding wood”.
The rubber tree is called by many names: hevea brasiliensis, the Pará tree, sharinga tree, or seringueira.
In the wild, the rubber tree will grow to heights of 100 to 130 feet, and can live up to 100 years. Its milky, white sap, known as latex, flows freely when a sliver of bark is removed. The tree can be tapped for latex once it reaches approximately six years of age.
In its raw state, the sap or latex was soft and stretchy being about 55% water and 40% rubber. When exposed to light and oxygen, it became brittle. It was sticky at room temperature, hardened at freezing temperatures and melted at 150 °C. Ancient rubber makers understood the properties of latex and mixed it with juice from the morning glory vines. The vines contain a chemical that has a stabilizing effect on the sap making it less brittle.
Gaining Popularity
Christopher Columbus was one of the first Europeans to bring news of this odd substance back to Europe in the 1500s. In 1736, French geographer , Charles Marie de la Condamine, brought samples of the substance to France. He recalled how Native Americans used rubber to waterproof shoes and cloaks. In 1770, the British chemist, Joseph Priestley, used latex as an eraser of pencil marks. Thus, the word entered the English lexicon as a substitute for the word “eraser”.
Charles Goodyear
It was not until the 1800s that practical uses of rubber were developed and the demand for rubber began. Charles Macintosh succeeded in producing waterproof clothing with it in 1823. In 1839, Charles Goodyear stumbled upon a method to stabilize rubber known as vulcanization. Goodyear’s discovery revolutionized the rubber industry and the rush for the new material quickly gained momentum.
The rubber boom
This rush was the start of what is called the “rubber cycle” or “boom”. The first boom occurred between 1879 and 1912 and coincided with the age of the automobile as Henry Ford began the mass production of vehicles. The second boom occurred between 1942 and 1945 as a result of the Second World War.
The export of rubber from Amazonia increased sixty-fold between 1827 and 1848. It became the most important export for Peru, Brazil and Colombia.
Centered in the Amazon Basin, the rubber boom and the need for a large workforce had a significant impact on indigenous populations across Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. There was a large expansion of colonization in the region. This attracted immigrant workers, generated wealth, caused cultural and social transformations, and disrupted local societies.
Rubber barons
As rubber plantations grew, labor shortages increased. The plantation owners, called “rubber barons” rounded up all the natives they could find and forced them to tap rubber from the trees. Rubber collecting was an extremely lucrative business. Many farmers and operators of sugar mills, especially in Brazil, gave up their previous activities to become rubber collectors or “seringueros”. Laborers, on the other hand, were paid very little, if at all. Slavery, systematic brutality, diseases and murder were widespread. In some areas, 90% of the native population was wiped out.
During the Amazon rubber boom it is estimated that diseases brought by immigrants, such as typhus and malaria, killed 40,000 native Amazonians.
Bio-pirate Henry Wickham
South America maintained a monopoly on the production of latex rubber during much of the 19th century but “bio-pirate” Henry Wickham quickly put an end to that. Wickham, a British entrepreneur, envisioned himself a planter accumulating wealth growing rubber trees, coffee, or bananas in a remote corner of the world. He tried them all , failing miserably in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Brazil, Belize, Australia and Papua New Guinea. He was good at one thing, however, theft.
Biopiracy or “scientific colonialism” is the unauthorized appropriation of knowledge and genetic resources of farming and indigenous communities by individuals or institutions seeking exclusive monopoly control.
The demise of the South American rubber monopoly
The rubber trade was heavily controlled by business interests but no laws expressly prohibited the export of seeds or plants. Wickham saw this loophole as an opportunity to acquire the riches he so desperately sought. In 1876, he smuggled 70,000 Amazonian rubber tree seeds out of Brazil and delivered them to the Royal Botanic Gardens in England. Of the 70,000 delivered only 2,400 germinated but that was enough to send seedlings to India, British Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), Singapore, and British Malaya. Malaya (now Peninsular Malaysia) was later to become the biggest producer of rubber.
Asian rubber plantations were organized and well-suited for large scale commercial production, whereas extracting the latex in Brazil and Peru remained a difficult process. The plantations in Asia proved to be more efficient and outproduced those in South America effectively collapsing the industry there. Those in control of England’s botanical experiments dismissed Wickham’s contribution. His lack of credentials and air of self-importance were off putting. The seedlings planted in Asia ultimately filled 95 percent of the world’s rubber demand in the early 1900s and enabled Britain to survive World War I. By the time he was knighted by Queen Victoria, Wickham was 74, impoverished and alone. His greed had cost him everything.
Rubber and the Congo
In the early 1900s, the Congo Free State in Africa was also a significant source of natural rubber latex, mostly gathered by forced labor. King Leopold II’s colonial state brutally enforced production quotas due to the high price of natural rubber at the time. Those who refused to work had their hands cut off. Villages that resisted the quotas were razed in order to scare survivors into compliance with the king’s orders.
Unexpected casualties
Unfortunately, the casualties of the rubber boom did not end with humans. Researchers have documented the killing of millions of animals in Brazil’s Amazon Basin for their hides following the collapse of the rubber boom in the 20th century.
Today, the latex sap from the rubber tree is still used in the modern processing of rubber and is often a substantial source of income for indigenous populations.
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