Amazon River Explained in under 3 Minutes

The Amazon River explained in under three minutes. The Amazon River in Numbers The Amazon River spreads all across the northern part of South America, and while it's not the longest river, it's undeniably the largest river in the world. The drainage basin, meaning the area in which precipitation is collecting into Amazon's tributaries, covers an area roughly the size of the United States, excluding Alaska and Texas. At the delta of the Amazon River, you can find a freshwater discharge of roughly 209 million litres every single second, which is 15 times more than the freshwater consumption of the entirety of the United States. Or from another perspective, if the entire world would only use water from the outlet of the Amazon, it would still only consume 61% of the river. The Amazon River in History The shores of the Amazon River and many of its tributaries have been settled by indigenous populations for many millennia, before the Spanish even discovered South America. It is thought that many smaller tribal societies have been living in these regions since around 5000 BC, and many findings suggest that these civilizations already conducted selective breeding of farming crop, they fertilized their fields by controlled burning, and they actively conducted trade with each other and even with the Andean civilizations at that time. However, when the Spanish and Portuguese arrived in the early 16th and 17th century, they completely disrupted the structure around the Amazon basin by founding colonial settlements along the stream and its tributaries, enslaving the indigenous population, and forcing Christianity upon the local population. Spain and Portugal continued to grow their influence in the region, until Brazil and many other South American nations gained independence in the early 19th century. Today, the riverbanks give a home to roughly 30 million people from over 350 different ethnical groups, of which around 10% are indigenous to the land. Weird Facts about the Amazon River Even though the river has such an enormous discharge of water, which potentially could be harvested in the form of hydroelectric power plants, there are no dams along the main stream of the Amazon River. This is partly due to the potential environmental impact, after a project of similar size at the Yangtze river in China, led to an ecological collapse, which would be terrible for the Amazon rainforest. Additionally to the lack of dams along the river, there is also a surprising lack of bridges. In fact, there is actually not a single bridge along the 6500 kilometers of the main stream. This is mostly due to the general lack of infrastructure in the area, since it is only very sparsely populated. And traversing the region on the river itself proved to be very efficient, considering that all villages and cities are located right on the riverbanks. If you enjoy these kind of videos, feel free to subscribe and check out my other videos. Cheers