Pre-Columbian Peoples

The natural environment of the continent of South America is overwhelmingly diverse and thus has posed special problems of physiological adaptation to its indigenous populations, as well as later to European, African, and Asian intruders. Indeed, because of the harsh environments of much of the continent, there are but few places in which people can flourish without great effort and skillful labor. In much of the continent’s vast interior, even communication and transportation would be impossible without the river systems of the Amazon and the Paraná– Paraguay along with the smaller rivers of Colombia and Venezuela, the Magdalena and the Orinoco, and the Sāo Francisco of northeastern Brazil.

One of the most formidable environments is that of the Andes Mountains, which range from western Venezuela to the tip of the continent, with snow-capped peaks at more than 20,000 feet in altitude and with populations perched at 10,000 and 13,000 feet. At such altitudes, scarcity of oxygen has led to physiological adaptations in the bodies of the indigenous peoples of Peru and Bolivia that permit them to perform hard physical labor in the thin air.

The Andes break the westerly movement of rainfall from the Amazon basin, and rain falls in profusion on the eastern slopes, where lush tropical forests shelter the people of the Upper Amazon from outside invaders. On the opposite side of the Andes, a lack of rainfall creates the semiarid coastal lowlands intersected by small rivers flowing through the desert to the ocean.