Az emberi jövő kulcsa a múltban: őshonos ökológiai tudás az Amazonas-medence átalakuló indián társadalmaiban • The Key to Human Future in the Past: Ancestral Ecological Knowledge in the Changing Indigenous Societies of the Amazon Basin

The economy and societies of the Amazon basin have undergone many major changes in the centuries since the Spanish conquest. The development concepts and attempts at modernisation of the countries of the region have permanently transformed the relationship between people and environment, marginalising ancestral indigenous cultures, destroying their natural habitat, and causing the disappearance of many languages and important ecological knowledge. The paper reviews the impacts on ecosystems and society of the main economic and demographic processes generated by external development ideas, and then the history and stages of the contact of Amazonian indigenous communities and their associated biocultural landscapes with the Western world, driven primarily by resource exploitation. Finally, we will