Amazon (2)


Source: WTL photograph© on site in the Amazon River Basin. Here we see a photo of the Rio Negro, which is a major tributary of the Amazon.
Comment: The Amazon River (o Rio Amazonas) is the American nomenclature for a series of rivers that have their headwaters in Perú, where the farthest reach of this river system is called the Río Urubamba, the sacred river of the Incas. In American terminology, a river is named (generally speaking) for its longest water course. Hence, what we call the Amazon in English is called by various names for successive segments of river: Urubamba, Ucayali, Marañón, Solimões, Amazonas (Amazon). The Amazon (with its five stretches of river) is 4,080 miles long. It rises in the Peruvian Andes and it empties into the Atlantic by pushing fresh water 60 miles into the ocean. Ten percent of the 10,000,000 living species on earth live in Amazonia (the region that empties into the river system), and one-fifth of the world's entire supply of fresh water flows through the Amazon and into the Atlantic Ocean. On the following linked maps, locate the Amazon River and Amazonia: