Our complicated relationship with the rainforest may be much older than we think . Archaeologists writing in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencessay the Almighty of ancient South American earthwork had also been farming and clearing the Amazon for millennium before Europeans arrived . The most striking evidence for this manipulation of the landscape ? Hundreds of geoglyphs come across across the region , revealed by deforestation .
For a tenacious time , the rain forest appeared lush and undisturbed , and we assumed it had always been that way . Then during the last century , Bos taurus ranchers began thin out down more and more trees to make way for their livestock . When the sawdust had settled , monolithic shapescould be seen cut up into the stain . archaeologist let on more than 450 of the geoglyphs in Brazil ’s Acre State alone .
Edison Caetano
Diego Gurgel
spark advance author Jennifer Watling is an archeologist at the University São Paulo . She said the glyphs ’ discovery created quite a stir . “ A batch of people have the estimate that the Amazon forests are pristine wood , ” shetoldThe New York Times , “ never touched by man , and that ’s obviously not the typeface . ”
What was the case , then ? To find out , Watling and her workfellow collect soil samples from two of the glyph sites . They sifted through the ground , plunk out microscopical plant fogey and pieces of charcoal , then used C dating to approximate the age of each tiny routine of grounds .
They ’ve been working on this inquiry for a while ; in the multilingual picture below , from 2013 , listen to the researchers explain some of their techniques .
The grounds told a level about the people who lived and worked in the forest around 4000 years ago . They had done some forest clearing of their own , burning sections of bamboo to open up place for land . They likely grew maize or squash and hoard food - bearing trees in one spot to produce what Watling called a “ prehistoric supermarket . ” Once these timberland farms were established , they began digging out the glyphs , which were likely used in spiritual rituals .
Unlike today ’s industrial logging and glade , the glyph - builder ’ agriculture was sustainable in nature . Their farm and burn areas were small and contained , and tolerate the environ wild and trees to keep on develop .
“ autochthonous communities have actually transform the ecosystem over a very long fourth dimension , ” said Watling . “ The forward-looking forest owe its biodiversity to the agroforestry practices that were go on during the time of the geoglyph constructor . ”
