The Amazon has been imagined as a pristine wilderness, one in need of protection from development. This framing has often treated the Amazon as a place without history, practically untouched before the arrival of colonizers in South America. Statistics is helping show the history is much more complicated than that and it’s the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Dani Gamerman.

Gamerman is Emeritus Professor at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where he was professor of statistics from 1996 to 2019. He is the author of numerous books and research papers, and the StatPop blog. He was one of two statisticians who worked on a Science paper showing evidence of manmade earthworks deep in heart of Amazonia and is also the author of a Significance article examining the use of statistics to map this hidden history of the Amazon.