1. The Upper Rio Negro Basin is one of the regions within Amazonia where an environment-based argument to explain social dynamics can be effectively employed; 2. The linguistic and archaeological data point to a fairly ancient occupation of this area by two of the linguistic groups currently found there - the Maipuran Arawakan and the Tukanoan. This is also most certainly true for the other group not dealt with in this dissertation, the Maku; 3. Based on the above, the Upper Rio Negro regional system is of pre-colonial origin; 4. Contrary to other areas in the Amazon, the European conquest did not promote the compression of Upper Rio Negro populations in refugee areas. Rather, one of the consequences of the European conquest in the Upper Rio Negro basin has been the expansion of some formerly localized Tukanoan-speaking groups; 5. Even in the face of the demographic, social and cultural changes brought up by the conquest, the Upper Rio Negro regional system is structurally similar to what it was before the sixteenth century. This is because the dynamics of social change in the Upper Rio Negro were structurally conditioned by indigenous cultural categories both before and after the conquest.