Brazil

Early History and Discover

Current artifacts, including cave paintings, suggest that human beings inhabited Brazil more than 300,000 years ago. European explorers found only a small indigenous population when they arrived in the land, but archaeological records indicate that there were large settlements in other areas, which could have been substantially reduced by smallpox and other diseases brought in by the European explorers.

These early indigenous inhabitants were classified into a sedentary population, who spoke the Tupian language and similar cultural patterns, and a nomadic population. Historians assume that there were approximately a million of these early peoples scattered throughout the territory. Some historians believe that these aborigines were native American tribes, composed of the Arawaks and Caribs in the north, the sedentary Tupi-Guarani of the east coast and the Amazon Valley, the Ges of the eastern and southern sides, and the Pano in the west. These tribes were...
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