Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
Brazil's recorded history begins with the arrival of the Portuguese in 1500,
although it had already been settled by human beings for millennia. The
importation of millions of African slaves over the next four centuries
completed the rich blend of European, indigenous and African influences
that formed modern Brazil and its people. Achieving independence from
Portugal in 1822, Brazil's enormous wealth in land and natural resources
underpinned a boom-and-bust cycle of economic development that
continues to the present day, though after competent leadership during
the presidencies of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula the outlook is
the best it has been for a generation.
Early history
Very little is known about the thousands of years during which Brazil was inhabited
exclusively by
indigenous tribes
. The most widely accepted theory is that South
America was settled by migrant hunters who came from Asia via the Bering Strait
around 10,000 years ago, though stone tools discovered in the Serra da Capivara
National Park in 2012 have challenged this theory - the tools were made 22,000 years
ago. The oldest ceramics yet found in the Americas were discovered near Santarém in
the 1990s and date back 8,000 years, suggesting that the Amazon was colonized before
the Andes in remote prehistory. Indeed, research in the Amazon Basin - expertly
summarized in Charles Mann's
1493
- has uncovered tantalizing evidence of advanced
civilizations all along the river, and even suggests that many tropical plants and fruits
that appear to be randomly spread throughout the jungle were actively cultivated by
prehistoric peoples. But the fragile, material traces these early inhabitants left have for
the most part not survived. The few exceptions - such as the exquisitely worked, glazed
ceramic jars unearthed on Marajó island in the Amazon - come from cultures that have
vanished so completely that not even a name records their passing.
By the time the Portuguese arrived in Brazil in the 1500s, the region was inhabited
by hundreds of different native tribes, whom they dubbed “Indians” (
índios
).
Linguistically and culturally these tribes were quite homogeneous, broadly divided into
Tupi-Guaraní
(mostly along the coast) and the
Tapuia
(north and inland). Nowhere was
stone used for building. There was no use of metal or the wheel, and no centralized,
state-like civilizations on the scale of Spanish America. The arrival of the Portuguese
was an utter catastrophe for these peoples: measles, smallpox, tuberculosis, gonorrhoea
and influenza killed thousands, often spreading along local trade routes long before
direct contact with Europeans. In 1500 the total number of indigenous people was
probably around five million - by 1800 there were just 250,000. However, the 2010
census revealed that 817,000 Brazilians now classify themselves as indigenous, and
6,000 BC
1500 AD
1532
1537
Earliest evidence of
human habitation
in Brazil
Pedro Álvares Cabral lands
in Brazil and claims it for
the Portuguese Crown
Portuguese establish São Vicente
(near present-day Santos) and
Piratininga (now São Paulo)
Olinda
founded
