O que os dados paleoecológicos nos dizem sobre o Antropoceno na Amazônia?

Abstract

Recently, Roberts et al. (2023) defined three socioeconomic thresholds thought to have laid the foundations for the Anthropocene: the first, between 4000 and 1000 BCE, related to the beginnings of agriculture; the second, between 0 and 1500 CE, related to urbanism and the demographic consolidation of human populations; and the third, between 1500 and the present CE, associated with the advance of colonialism and capitalism. In this article, we discuss the results of paleoecological studies carried out in four Amazonian regions known to have high concentrations of archaeological sites (the geoglyphs of Acre, the raised fields of French Guiana, the dark earths of the lower Tapajós region, and the zanja sites of Iténez, Bolivia), and evaluate what they tell us about the nature of the Amazonian Anthropocene. We conclude that the largest and most destructive anthropogenic impacts occurred during the colonial period, especially in the last 50 years, associated with the arrival of capitalist economies. In contrast, Indigenous management practices, which begin to be visible from ca. 2500 BCE, and become highly transformative from ca. 0 CE, managed to maintain vital ecosystem services and increase the agrobiodiversity of the rainforest, building upon – rather than destroying – their relationships with other living beings.