Avaliação: Historia indígena de larga duración en los dos mayores sistemas fluviales de Sudamérica: las cuencas del Amazonas y del Plata – From cultivation to agriculture in SW Amazonia

Southwestern Amazonia is one of the new world domestication centres. Several cultivars, including cassava (M. esculenta), peach palm (Bactris gasipaes ), pumpkin (Curcubita maxima) have been domesticated here beginning more than 10k yrs ago. It is not till the late Holocene, however, that agricultural fields appear in the Llanos de Moxos. I will present a reconstruction of environmental changes during the Holocene and how they could have affected pre-Columbian populations. I will discuss the extent to which the peculiar geoecological setting of the Llanos de Moxos could help explain the persistent status of incipient agriculture during 8k yrs.

• Agriculture
• Raised fields
• Human-environment interactions
• Llanos de Moxos