Indigenous Amazonian ethnicity indicates genetic origins in the Amazon basin, which is spread across a vast territory over four fifths the size of the United States, and which is home to the world’s largest tropical rainforest. The region — which includes parts of Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela — hosts wide ecological diversity, including savannas, swamps, and rainforest, and more species of plants and animals than any other terrestrial ecosystem on the planet. Indigenous peoples inhabit a large portion of the Amazon rainforest: In Brazil, which encompasses 60% of the rainforest, the indigenous population is estimated to be 310,000, including 160 different individual societies. The Tupi people are the largest indigenous group in Amazonia, including among them the Caetés, Potiguara, Tabajara, Tamoios, Temiminó, Tupinambá, and Tupiniquim tribes. Other groups are collectively known as Tapuia (“non-Tupi people”), including the Tremembé tribe.
Research your ancestors on MyHeritage
Indigenous Amazonian history
Archeological evidence indicates that the indigenous peoples of the Americas migrated from Siberia in northern Asia over the Bering Strait in several waves throughout history. The indigenous population living in Brazil at the time of first contact with Europeans are thought to have crossed the Bering Land Bridge at the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000 B.C.E.
The Amazon rainforest has been shaped by man for at least 5,000 years. Practices such as slash and burn agriculture, silviculture, forest gardening, and production of artificial fertile soil (known as terra preta, literally “black soil” in Portuguese) helped indigenous Amazonians overcome the challenges of the region’s naturally nutrient-sparse soil. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Amazon rainforests housed a population of approximately 5 million people. Geoglyphs discovered in deforested regions of the rainforest suggest that complex, highly sophisticated civilizations existed in the Amazon in pre-Columbian times.
In 1500, the first Portuguese explorers to land in Brazil claimed the region for Portugal. By 1534, they had established 3 settlements in the Amazon and started clearing the forest to establish sugar-cane plantations and cattle ranches. The Tupi tribes of the region were captured and enslaved, forced to toil on the plantations; those who resisted were executed. However, the greatest threat to the Tupi was not Europeans themselves, but the diseases they carried from Europe — such as smallpox and influenza — which decimated the defenseless local population. It is estimated that by 1700, the indigenous population of the Amazon had shrunk to a third of its original size.
European colonization of the region expanded dramatically in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, during the Amazonian Rubber Boom. The prospects of the extraction and commercialization of rubber — a useful raw industrial product — saw the Amazon flooded with immigrant workers who were sent into the forests to tap the wild rubber trees. This influx led to dramatic cultural and social transformations in the region, with devastating repercussions for indigenous societies. The desperate scramble for industrial raw materials during the Second World War prompted a brief second rubber boom.
In 1910, Brazil established the Serviço de Proteção aos Índios (“Service for the Protection of Indians”), charged with the care and protection of native Amazonians. But in the 1960s, increasing reports of misconduct led to a damning report of the Serviço de Proteção aos Índios, citing failures ranging from corruption in the organization to atrocities committed against indigenous people under its protection. In response, the government established the Fundação Nacional do Índio (“National Indian Foundation”). The 1988 Brazilian Constitution recognized indigenous Amazonians’ right to retain their traditional identity and way of life, and defined Indigenous Territories — lands inalienably in the possession of indigenous Amazonians. Despite these provisions, however, the native population of the Amazon still faces external threats and challenges to their lands and cultural heritage. In 2019, MyHeritage sent a Tribal Quest delegation to the Amazon to assist remote tribes in Panama and Ecuador in documenting and preserving their family history.
Indigenous Amazonian culture
Living in an area teeming with biodiversity, societies of indigenous Amazonians have developed a rich and variegated culinary tradition. Big, almost boneless fresh-water fish grilled over charcoal, fried, or cooked in a variety of ways form the main protein of the Amazonian diet. Manioc, a local woody shrub, also plays a central role in the local kitchen, for example in pato no tucupi –— a dish of boiled duck in tucupi (a yellow sauce extracted from wild manioc) — or maniçoba — a dish of boiled manioc leaves with salted pork, dried meat, and other additions, such as bacon and sausage. The Amazon rainforests abound with superfoods, including the açaí berry, which in recent years has gained tremendous popularity around the world.
The majority of Amazon cultures practice some form of Animism: the belief that spirits reside in all animate beings and inanimate objects. Shamans, tribal priests or priestesses, use the power of the spirits to heal members of the tribe or to call for harm to befall their enemies. While Animism is still prevalent among indigenous Amazonians, the proselytizing efforts of European missionaries introduced Christianity to the region. The native people of the Amazon have cultivated and harvested the diverse resources of the rainforest for thousands of years, and employ them to their use: for example, certain tribes hunt and fish using arrows dipped in plant-based poisons or blow darts dipped into the poison found on the skin of Amazonian frogs.
Indigenous Amazonian languages
The Amazon hosts no fewer than 195 different languages. Tupian languages, comprising the region’s largest language family, is spoken widely across the northern half of South America. Many Amazonians today are bilingual, speaking their indigenous language as well as Spanish or Portuguese. However, many indigenous languages have become increasingly endangered, as more and more young Amazonians forget the languages of their forefathers, instead speaking only Spanish or Portuguese.
Explore more about ethnicity estimates
- MyHeritage DNA at MyHeritage
- Ethnicities around the world at MyHeritage
- Tribal Quest: a pro bono MyHeritage project to help indigenous communities in remote locations, including the Amazon. preserve their family histories
- What Is My Ethnicity? How MyHeritage Estimates Ethnicities at MyHeritage Knowledge Base
- Where's My Ethnicity?!: Why An Ethnicity Might Not Show Up In Your DNA (and How To Find Evidence Of It Anyway) at MyHeritage Knowledge Base