By observing the linguistic repertoire of the native peoples of amazon, one notes its importance and relevance for the emergence of different cultures in South America, where the variety of languages is a basic precept.
the calls “isolated languages”, which have no lexical counterparts, constitute 50% of the linguistic percentage of our continent, among the hundreds that already exist.
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Compared to Europe and Asia, the South American continent came out ahead thanks to agricultural practices.
Derived from the Indo-European linguistic trunk, the success achieved by this type of language is due, above all, to the competitive advantage of the original speakers, associated with mainly to the expansions and development of populations of the dominant Han Chinese peoples and the Bantu-speaking African peoples, who ranged from Cameroon to Africa southern.
A domination through war strategies and agricultural production gave these peoples total dominion over smaller ones, who succumbed to these influences.
In South American territory, there are no records that there has been a population with such a force of domination. However, data point to linguistic families that dominated dozens of languages and thousands of kilometers of territory.
The most famous and well-known exponent of this linguistic family is undoubtedly the Tupi Guarani. By the beginning of the 16th century, it had already spread across the entire Brazilian coast, reaching parts of the Uruguayan and Amazon regions.
It is believed that the group that gave rise to the language emerged in what is now the state of Rondônia, in the same period as the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, millennia ago.
Data indicate that the linguistic cultures of the Aruak family emerged in the northwest of the Amazon, also reaching a large part of Colombia and the Caribbean. Tribes of Taino and Palikur Indians were part of this large ethnic-linguistic group, characterizing the plurality of alliances of the so-called Upper Xingu.
In relation to the central region of the country, which includes some areas in the interior of the South and Southeast regions, the dominant linguistic family was Macro-Jê, frequently used by the Xavante and Kaingang.
It is believed that the development and expansion of agriculture directly influenced the idiomatic expansion coming from the Amazon region. Several plants, until then considered wild, were “domesticated” by these rising peoples.
Examples include cocoa, pineapple, cassava, peach palm, peanuts, which represent some of the more than 80 species adapted for human use and consumption.
Another important factor would have been the entry of corn from Mexico into South American territory through the Amazon rainforest. This agricultural multiplicity allowed the people of the region, especially the Tupi-Guarani Indians, to dominate and colonize other tribes in the Atlantic Forest region that, until then, were separated from the other populations.
See too: Indigenous Religion – Culture, summary, rituals, symbols