Human prehistory provides basic data about long-term human-environment interaction in Amazonia. This paper reviews current knowledge of native land use and its relationships with the environment in the floodplains of Amazonia over the last 12,000 years, and outlines the scientific and policy implications for biodiversity, conservation, and development.

It is widely assumed that shifting cultivation, supplemented by foraging, represents the traditional native adaptation to the Amazon forest. In this system, small plots are slashed and burned, and crops are planted in the ashes for a few years, after which the forest is allowed to return. As such, it is seen as giving people access to the nutrients of the forest vegetation for their subsistence without having long-term deleterious effects on the habitat. Pure foraging is supposed to be impossible, due to the scarce and dispersed forest resources (Bailey et al., 1989), and permanent agriculture, the economic support of civilization, was impossible, due to infertile soil. Shifting cultivation is con-sidered to have developed when Andean agriculturists migrated into Amazonia and could not maintain permanent cultivation systems (Meggers, 1971). In this view, the relations between native people and the forest have long been in an adaptive equilib-