Quando o presente visita o passado. Reflexões da arqueologia sobre o futuro da Amazônia

Abstract

More than telling a story about the past, Amazonian archaeology has shown us, over the last few decades, successful strategies for “peaceful coexistence” between the people of the forest and the environment. Traditional societies have often warned us that the current logic of using Amazonian resources is unsustainable. Far from pretending that archaeology will bring a scientific seal to something that is already established by these people, or from reifying the romantic vision of the “noble savage”, we can say that what the research has been demonstrating is the validity of these strategies in the long term, on a scale of at least 12 thousand years. These choices, made thousands of years ago, have promoted forest resilience even in the face of the catastrophic imbalance initiated by colonialism and heightened in recent years by the unrestrained exploitation of resources within a global economy. However, continued resilience depends on how we absorb the echo of the voices of those who have transformed the Amazon into the diverse forest we know today. The text defends the knowledge of traditional peoples as one of the best future alternatives for Amazonia, an ancient and cumulative knowledge, in no way inferior to what we consider scientific.