by Peter Speetjens | 09/05/2024 | Brazil, South America
A professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois, Roosevelt has been dubbed the “matriarch” of archaeology in the Amazon Basin. In a career spanning some 40 years, she helped accomplish a radical shift in the way we perceive past and present in the...
by Peter Speetjens | 09/05/2024 | Brazil
Streets lie deserted. Gardens have overgrown homes. Doors and windows are bricked up. The Bebedouro neighborhood in Maceió, in Brazil’s northeastern coastal state of Alagoas, is a shadow of its former self. And soon not even that. Every building there is numbered. As...
by Peter Speetjens | 09/04/2024 | Brazil
Michael Heckenberger has lived among the Kuikuro people at the Upper Xingu River for some 30 years. A professor of anthropology at the University of Florida his research has shown that, prior to the European conquest, the region was not “pristine forest” as was...
by Peter Speetjens | 16/05/2023 | Brazil
The Amazon Rainforest is considered the ultimate wilderness. Here, nature rules ruthlessly in all its grandeur, with no room for agriculture and, hence, none for humankind. However, recent archaeological research has turned the image on its head. Human presence in the...
by Peter Speetjens | 12/12/2022 | Brazil
Onder het beton en asfalt van São Paulo liggen honderden rivieren begraven. En toch onderging deze Braziliaanse miljoenenstad recent de derde grootste droogte in tien jaar. Journalist Peter Speetjens doet het verhaal van een stad vol water die vreest voor een tekort...
by Peter Speetjens | 07/12/2022 | Brazil
De Braziliaanse president Jair Bolsonaro presteerde begin oktober onverwachts goed bij de eerste ronde van de presidentsverkiezingen. Een van Bolsonaro’s cruciale wapens daarbij is zijn wijdverbreide digitale netwerk, waarin een hoofdrol weggelegd is voor nepnieuws en...
