Amazonia

Amazonia provides the most comprehensive anthropological discussion so far of the Amazon basin as a human habitat… This book specifies variables influencing cultural adaptation in the Amazon basin and presents a set of general principles constituting a theory of cultural evolution. In two descriptive sections of the book, Meggers analyzes the selective pressures in two distinct geographical zones: the terra firme or unflooded land, and the varzea or periodic floodplain. – Ellen B. Bass Science Meggers has marshalled an impressive argument on the ecological imperatives of a truly unique Amazonia… We are given a well-written and quite thorough description of the physical features of the two zones and a series of ethnographic vignettes to illustrate the action of cultural adaptation. Man An excellent, concise statement of the facts of the ecology of humid tropical lowlands, systematic descriptions of a number of widely spread Amazonian cultures, and a skillful integration of these two bodies of knowledge. The result is a demonstration that cultures are as surely subject to and molded by natural selection and environmental characteristics as are species of plants and animals… Amazonia will inevitably be a basic text for the field of tropical ecology. – F. R. Fosberg Ecology

Betty J. Meggers is a research anthropologist at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Instituion, and an honorary fellow of the Association for Tropical Biology.

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