Article by the North-American archaeologist Betty J. Meggers (1921-2012), specialized in pre-Columbian cultures, on research she has been carrying out in the Ecuadorian and Brazilian Amazon, especially on the Marajoara culture. The text discusses the growing interest of anthropological research on a relationship between the environment and the development of cultural patterns, giving particular importance to agriculture as a decisive and determining factor in this relationship. For Meggers, the level of development that a culture can achieve depends on the potential for agriculture offered by the environment it occupies. Read here.