Image Credit : Professor José Iriarte
Posted on 06/22/2020 8:59:03 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Early inhabitants fertilized the soil with charcoal from fire remains and food waste. Areas with this "dark earth" have a different set of species than the surrounding landscape, contributing to a more diverse ecosystem with a richer collection of plant species, researchers from the State University of Mato Grosso in Brazil and the University of Exeter have found.
The legacy of this land management thousands of years ago means there are thousands of these patches of dark earth dotted around the region, most around the size of a small field. This is the first study to measure the difference in vegetation in dark and non-dark earth areas in mature forests across a region spanning a thousand kilometers...
The study, published in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography, reveals for the first time the extent to which pre-Columbian Amerindians influenced the current structure and diversity of the Amazon forest of the areas they once farmed.
Researchers sampled around 4,000 trees in southern and eastern Amazonia. Areas with dark earth had a significantly higher pH and more nutrients that improved soil fertility. Pottery shards and other artefacts were also found in the rich dark soils...
Professor José Iriarte, an archaeologist from the University of Exeter, said: "By creating dark earth early inhabitants of the Amazon were able to successfully cultivate the soil for thousands of years in an agroforestry system.
(Excerpt) Read more at heritagedaily.com ...
from the "rainforest" keyword:
Now if someone today were to introduce some new plant life in the Amazon that would be considered criminal.
“Innovation”...”land management”....both infer wilfull acts (IMO). I’m pretty sure this just happened incidentially with...making fire! Cooking!
And I’m also pretty sure the people back then didn’t fret much about “biodiversity”.
I first heard of this Amazonian dark earth on a Josh Gates Destination Unknown episode. At the time they were claiming how it was made was unknown.
I remembered how we would clear cut some space just inside a forest (about 30 yards by 15 yards), take the firewood out then burn the laps and leaf cover in a small controlled burn.
That was our plant bed for the next years tobacco crop.
That patch would stay fertile for years if we took care of it.
I figured the dark earth had to be something along the same line.
Only citified academics are mystified by what old school farmers and laborers knew from experience.
These people are a little late to this subject, aren’t they? We were posting about this very same subject 18 years ago.
Sure, but back then there was no mention of "diversity". ;^)
Oh No!!! The Amazon is supposed to be virgin land, untouched by human hands and feet for ever and ever in the past. How dare that it have people who had desecrated its sacred rain forests with hunting, gathering and (mega-horrid) farming.
The African Source Of The Amazon’s Fertilizer
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1740969/posts?page=13#13
Mysterious Earthen Rings Predate Amazon Rainforest
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3178510/posts?page=18#18
Stone age etchings found in Amazon basin as river levels fall
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2625807/posts?page=16#16
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