When Europeans first encountered the inhabitants of the Amazon in the 16th century AD, they found large settlements along the riverbanks, controlled by chiefs.
These waged many wars, making slaves of their captured adversaries. Huge defences were raised around settlements, built on artificial mounds above the level of annual floods.
Archaeology shows that this wealthy and complex society had evolved a thousand years before. But it did not long survive the arrival of Europeans. New diseases decimated the native people and European greed for the best land drove them into the far less productive jungle interior. Here Friar Gaspar de Carvajal describes the lands of one chief, in 1541:
