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Life in the Rainforest

The Indians in the Amazon preferred their traditional life living in the forests of South America – why should they spend days toiling on the unproductive European farms in Amaz⌠nia when the forest provided so much in abundance. Because they had lived there for thousands of years, the Indians had learned that the best form of agriculture in Amaz⌠nia was to plant small gardens in the middle of the forest, use them for only a few years and then let the forest grow back over them. The Indians' diet was supplemented by hunting, fishing, and foods gathered from the rainforest.

The Indians moved their villages and planted new gardens every few years because the poor tropical soils were unable to sustain farming for long periods of time – within a few years the nutrients that the plants needed to grow would all have been used up, and their gardens would no longer produce much food. By leaving the gardens untended, and letting the forest grow back over them, the nutrients in the tropical soils were eventually replenished and could be used again in several generations. Evolution in the rainforest had developed special methods for plants to grow in the poor conditions, which were very unlike the conditions that the Europeans had been used to. When the Indians adopted the European methods they discovered that life became very difficult, and they would often starve because European methods of farming would produce very poor results and much of the food that they did produce taken from them by European authorities.

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