There are a lot of possible ways in which to respond to this objection. Were Amazonians of centuries past, for instance, entirely unaware of the great Andean empires to their west? People used to get around. It’s unlikely they simply had no idea of developments in neighbouring parts of the continent. As we’ll see in Chapter Seven, there is also now a good deal of evidence for the existence of large polities in Amazonia itself, in much earlier times. Perhaps these were the children of rebels who fled or even overthrew such ancient kingdoms. But the most obvious objection is that, if the
...more
