Two hundred million years ago, long before humans were even dim a gleam in the eye of some pink-nosed tree shrew ? South America, Africa and t6he rest of the world's continents were all part of one enormous land mass: Gondwanaland. At that time, what is now the Amazon basin formed a giant inland sea, surrounded by tropical forest. Around 100 million years ago, South America began to break off from Africa and the continent gradually became an island.

About four million years ago the Andes Mountains thrust up and the present contours of the Amazon basin were formed. The water flowing out of the Andes formed a network of hydrique capillaries forming the world's largest river, the Amazon. Over the years the firm lands were colonized for the most primitive life forms and also the most complex ones, now being manifest due to a long and meticulous evolution and adaptation.

This we can observe it in thousands of cases of symbiosis between different species that interact each other and that one could not survive without the other, this is the case of seed dispersers, pollinators, processors in the decomposition of organic material such us birds, mammals, insects, bacteria and micro-bacteria, to name a few.

If there is a great message that the study of ecology can leave to a naturalist, is that biodiversity is the cornerstone of nature. The Amazon basin is first and foremost, the biggest celebration of diversity on the planet.

Looking carefully the subtle traces of time in the Amazonian landscape, we will see major rivers shaping their courses and rainforests expanding and contracting due to climate changes and evolutionary processes of the major ecosystems that defined, for ever, the largest river of the earth.

All these factors, combined with other less obvious, collaborated on the formation of new species. In simpler words, the Amazon basin is like a big house with room for evolution and unlimited entry to new guests. The key of this eco-house are the flowering plants and the door they open is the greatest manifestation of tropical diversity on our planet.

From a biogeographically point, the Amazon region can be divided into four major regions: the Andean slopes, the Amazon plains, the Brazilian massif and the Guyanas massif. The major tributaries of the Amazon, whose sources are originated in the Andes, are the Madre de Dios, the Purus, the Kur�a and the Huallaga.

Indeed, the wealth that so far has been preyed without any criteria are innumerable, as are countless people that as a result became millionaires, Charles Good year was one of them. At the beginning of 1900 with the rise of rubber gum boom, came also the wood cutting that still persist, also the extraction of precious metals like gold, zinc, etc., not even mention the agro-industry and even more the pharmaceuticals, a good example is the discovery of "curare" or "curar�na" (used by Amazon natives like poison on the tips of their arrows), modern medicine could never have been able to anesthetize a patient to undergo a surgical operation.

Another example is the percentage of alkaloids or active-bases most of our pharmacopoeia derived from these forests, this knowledge were literally stolen of the cultural baggage of several indigenous groups. It is also important to mention that 120 edible plants of great importance in the world are from Peru, this is the case of the potato, cocoa, maize, coca leaf, among others.