The increasingly better-known archaeological record of the Amazon basin, the Orinoco basin and the Guianas both questions the long-standing premise of a pristine tropical rainforest environment and also provides evidence for major biome-scale cultural and technological transitions prior to European colonization. Associated changes in pre-Columbian human population size and density, however, are poorly known and often estimated on the basis of unreliable assumptions and guesswork. Drawing on recent developments in the aggregate analysis of large radiocarbon databases, here we present and examine different proxies for relative population change between 1050 BC and AD 1500 within this broad region. By using a robust model testing approach, our analyses document that the growth of pre-Columbian human population over the 1700 years prior to European colonization adheres to a logistic model of demographic growth. This suggests that, at an aggregate level, these pre-Columbian populations had potentially reached carrying capacity (however high) before the onset of European colonization. Our analyses also demonstrate that this aggregate scenario shows considerable variability when projected geographically, highlighting significant gaps in archaeological knowledge yet also providing important insights into the resilience of past human food procurement strategies. By offering a new understanding of biome-wide pre-Columbian demographic trends based on empirical evidence, our analysis hopes to unfetter novel perspectives on demic expansions, language diversification trajectories and subsistence intensification processes in the Amazonian biome during the late Holocene.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Cross-disciplinary approaches to prehistoric demography’.

亚马逊盆地、奥里诺科盆地和圭亚那日益广为人知的考古记录都对原始热带雨林环境的长期存在提出了质疑，也为欧洲殖民之前的主要生物群落规模的文化和技术转型提供了证据。然而，前哥伦布时期人口规模和密度的相关变化却鲜为人知，并且经常根据不可靠的假设和猜测进行估计。利用大型放射性碳数据库综合分析的最新进展，我们在此展示并检查了该广阔区域内从公元前 1050 年到公元 1500 年之间相对人口变化的不同代理。通过使用稳健的模型测试方法，我们的分析表明，在欧洲殖民之前的 1700 年中，前哥伦布时期的人口增长遵循人口增长的逻辑模型。这表明，在总体水平上，这些前哥伦布时期的人口在欧洲殖民开始之前可能已经达到了承载能力（无论多么高）。我们的分析还表明，这种综合情景在地理上预测时显示出相当大的可变性，突出了考古知识的重大差距，同时也为过去人类食品采购战略的弹性提供了重要见解。通过基于经验证据对整个生物群落的前哥伦布时期人口趋势提供新的理解，我们的分析希望能够摆脱对人口扩张的新观点，

本文是主题问题“史前人口学的跨学科方法”的一部分。