What is the Amazon basin?

Answer 1

The Amazon Basin has been continuously inhabited for more than 12,000 years, since the first proven arrivals of people in South America. By the 16th century the population was scattered among hundreds of small tribes. As many as 90 percent of the inhabitants were killed by introduced diseases within the first hundred years of contact with European colonizers. Upon the European discovery of America, the Portuguese and the Spanish signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided the continents in two: a large Spanish western part, which encompassed all of then unknown North America and Central America, in addition to western South America; while the Portuguese received Eastern South America, which later became modern eastern Brazil. The Spanish claim was confirmed by explorers, most notably by the expedition of Francisco de Orellana in 1541-42 By the late 17th century, Portuguese/Brazilian explorers dominated much of the Amazon Basin because the mouth of the Amazon river lay within the Portuguese side, and the Brazilian inward exploration venturers such as the Bandeirantes, who originated in São Paulo, had conquered much of what is today central Brazil (states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás) and then proceeded to the Amazon. In 1750, the Treaty of Madrid certified the transfer of most of the Amazon Basin and the region of Mato Grosso to the Portuguese side, hugely contributing to the continental size of what is now Brazil. In 1903, Brazil bought a large portion of northern Bolivia and made it its current state of Acre. In 2006, the newly elected Bolivian president Evo Morales talked about "getting it back. The Brazilians got it for the price of a horse". No action was taken and the two nations remain friendly. In the late 19th century, a US-Brazilian joint venture failed to implement the Madeira-Mamoré railway, in the state of Rondônia, with a huge cost in money and lives. Intense deforestation began in the second half of the 20th century, with population growth and development plans such as the failed Brazilian Trans-Amazonian Highway. In the late 1980s, the Brazilian Chico Mendes, who lived in Acre, received international attention for his passionate defense of the forest and its people, especially after his death by shooting by farmers whose interests he harmed.

Answer 2

The Amazon basin is the drainage area of the Amazon River in South America. It is mostly a tropical rainforest with an abundance of plant and animal life.