I have been thinking for a while now about the lost potential of the Amazon Basin for a complex, centralized and very large state to arise, somewhat like China.
It seems Amazonia is a very inviting place for a centralized complex society to rise and thrive, for the following reasons:
It seems Amazonia is a very inviting place for a centralized complex society to rise and thrive, for the following reasons:
- Amazonia, unlike Eurasia and like the adjacent Andes, has no real threat of nomadic invasions, effectively eliminating the threat of military destruction until contact with the old world.
- Though the soil is mostly infertile, this is, and was, easily changed through the use of terra preta. Furthermore, even in Precolumbian OTL, the region supported a large population and in fact probably developed agriculture before the Andes did.
- Also, the nature of Amazonian agriculture, based on a diverse array of highly productive native plants as peanuts, peach palms, pineapples, extra long staple cotton, ivory palms, bamboo, manioc, sweet potatoes, stevia, açaí palms, cashews, &c., meant that rather little effort is needed to produce a huge harvest, leaving any people who use OTL Amazonia's agricultural system quite a bit more spare time to develop their society, technology and culture than any other preindustrial agricultural people.
- Diseases were not really any more of an issue in Amazonia than they were elsewhere in the Precolumbian Americas, unlike, say, Africa or New Guinea.
- Finally, the Amazon River and its innumerable tributaries would allow a civilization to maintain communications and trade, as well as ensuring plenty of water for farming, drinking and a place for what are still some of, if not the most, productive inland fisheries in the world (a good number of the fishes in the Amazon River basin are highly suitable for aquaculture, an excellent source of protein if the population gets really big).