CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN BRAZIL 
By FERNANDO ALTENFELDER SILVA 
Faculdadc de Filosofia, Ciencias e Letras de 
Rio Claro, Estado de Sao Paulo, Brasil 
and 
BETTY J. MEGGERS 
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 
Like most modern political units, Brazil is a land of geographical 
diversity. The greater Amazon Basin is a vast area of slight elevation 
bound together by a dozen major rivers and many smaller streams 
flowing from north, west, and south to empty into the main channel 
of the Rio Amazonas (fig. 15). During the rainy season the daily 
downpour exceeds the capacity for drainage, with the result that the 
rivers flood their banks, and many square miles of forest are inun- 
dated. Intermittent elevations of varying extent are the locus of mod- 
ern settlement as well as of villages and fields of past inhabitants. At 
the driest part of the year, many tributaries become blocked with large 
sand bars leaving small channels barely passable in a dugout canoe, 
and rapids are reduced to a trickle among the rocks. 
The environment of this area is one of the most difficult to shape to 
the needs of civilized life. Rapidly declining soil fertility requires the 
frequent moving of fields, and the small amount of arable land in 
exploitable radius of the village keeps population concentration at a 
low level. The Tropical Forest pattern of culture — characterized by 
small and frequently moved villages; a subsistence derived from 
slash-and-burn agriculture, supplemented by hunting and fishing; a 
social organization lacking strong centralized control and class 
distinctions, and having only a rudimentary division of labor — was 
present throughout most of the area at the time of European contact, 
and in many respects remains the most efficient form of human ad- 
aptation. 
The coastal and southern portions of Brazil are by contrast lands 
of higher elevation and more temperate climate. Although united by a 
frontage on the sea, whose fertility as a food source is reflected 
in the hundreds of shell middens or sambaquis that line the shore, this 
zone is not uniformly exploitable in other respects. The northern por- 
tion, occupying the easternmost projection of the continent, is subject 
to extreme aridity. Southward, rainfall becomes increasingly more 
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