When people think of Amazonian tribes, one thing seems to consistently pop up, and that’s cannibalism, and although it has been well documented throughout tribes across the world, its much rarer than people may think.
Tribes within the Amazon are often much friendlier than people think, and only want to protect their land and their people. As for what they actually eat, tribes within this particular jungle have access to a wider range of food than any other jungle on the planet.
Because the Amazon is by far the biggest jungle, it’s also home to the widest variety of wild food, which has often been allowed to grow untouched for generations. The only difficulty the occupants of this jungle have is farm land, as openings large enough to plant anything are extremely rare, and chopping down a load of ancient trees with primitive axes is often to much work. Because of this tribes normally live a hunter – gatherer lifestyle, which has served tribes that live here well for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Here’s a list of some of the most commonly consumed plants and animals within the Amazon:
Fish:
Fresh water dolphin, sting ray, catfish, piranha, eel, freshwater crab, mussels and various other small types of freshwater fish.
Fruit:
Acai berries, Camu Camu fruit, Passion fruit, tomato’s, Cupuacu fruit, oranges, Maracuya, Aguaje, coconuts, Lemons, grapefruit, bananas, pineapples, mangoes, avocado and Bacaba to name but a few. The reason that some of these are not better heard of is due to how costly they are the produce for the fruit yield they provide, making the Amazon home to a huge selection of fruit that no ones ever heard of.
Grain:
Maize is pretty much the only type of regular grain that grows wild in the Amazon. There are various other small seeds that are eaten, but Maize is the primary grain throughout most of the region.
Vegetables:
Beans, Cassava, Cacao, Chia, sweet potato, squashes, yams and various plant roots. Vegetables are normally difficult to grow in the jungle as they require much more particular conditions than most other plants, and so are normally encountered with a single plant here and there as opposed to patch’s.
Meat:
Wild pigs, camen, alligators, monkeys, orangutans, tapir’s, Jaguars, sloths, armadillo’s, ocelot, snakes, tarantulas, scorpions, otters and various bird types.
Flavourings and other foods
Black peppercorns, mustard, vanilla, cinnamon and of course, Brazil nuts.
There are hundreds of edible plants that can be found in this jungle and the list would simply be to long if i named them all. But these are the most commonly eaten foods for most jungle tribes throughout the Amazon. One interesting thing about the way these people cook is they have completely different understandings of what is considered a “safe” way to prepare food.
For example there is one such tribe in the Amazon that cooks a type of baked Yam dish that they prepare by sitting round a large bowl, chewing up mouth fulls of yam to mash it up and give it some liquid, then everyone spits their mouth full of mashed up yam mush into the bowl. When there’s enough of it various flavourings like mustard and pepper are added, then its formed into small cakes and baked.