Chapter 9 investigates the peculiar culture surrounding agriculture among the societies of the Amazon rainforest. These traditions, which sprang up in reaction to the difficult and even hostile environment of the rainforest, evolved over thousands of years. Beginning with the accounts of Gaspar de Carvajal, a Spanish explorer and would-be conquistador, Mann expounds upon the hypothesis that the Amazon region was formerly densely populated, owing to its novel techniques of agriculture. This hypothesis is based primarily on a work by Smithsonian archaeologist Betty Meggers, who writes of the specific effectiveness of slash-and-burn techniques sued to enrich the rainforest’s soil. Moreover, she argues that the frequent, strong weather conditions created by the tropical climate helped to secure the value of this strategy over a long-term period. The goal of this, Meggers contends, is a strategy that creates an ecological balance, at the cost of reduced scale of cultivation. The soil itself is a subject of much attention and study. Called terra preta, the Amazon soil, enriched with charcoal over many generations, has a higher capacity for retaining elements necessary to sustain agricultural production in these communities. Overall, this chapter complicates and elaborates upon the nature of the connection between indigenous peoples and their environment, describing how the purposes of agriculture and culture in the Americas exceeded the conventional expectations of anthropology and archaeology.