Human presence and landscape transformations

Following the Historical Ecologists approach, this article will use data from different collaborative with the intention of showing that the Amazon rainforest today, considered by many as the one of very few wild, pristine and unspoilt environments on the planet is actually the result of a long period of human managements that have had beneficial impacts on the system. This is an extremely important premise to rethink the role of traditional populations to preserve the Amazon. This work addresses the four main moments in the history of human occupation in the Amazon: the early migrants; the first more stationary occupations, the great villages, the population peak around the year one thousand and the traditional populations today.