Vegetational fluctuation and prehistoric cultural adaptation in Amazonia: Some tentative correlations

Biogeographical studies have generated the hypothesis that the remarkably large number of plant and animal species inhabiting Amazonia are a consequence of several episodes of forest fragmentation and coalescence, in which periods of isolation that permitted biological differentiation alternated with periods of renewed interaction. Geological and palynological evidence support this reconstruction, but data are insufficient to permit definition of the dimensions and locations of the refugia, or to separate one episode from another. Dating is tentative, but the two most recent episodes appear to fall within the span of human occupation of the continent. Examination of linguistic, archaeological and ethnographic data reveals widespread dispersals, disjunct distributions and other patterns of the kinds observed by biogeographers. Glottochronological and Carbon‐14 dates correlate well enough with estimates for the durations of the forest refugia to suggest that the biogeographical model is useful for interpreting prehistoric cultural adaptation to Amazonia.