
Network of fortified towns indicates Amazon was once heavily populated - curtis
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/network-of-fortified-towns-indicates-amazon-was-once-heavily-populated/
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wizardforhire
It's worth mentioning Terra Preta [1] the manmade soil that makes the Amazon
Rain Forest possible in such a huge flood plain.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta)

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theoh
According to that page "Terra preta soils are found mainly in the Brazilian
Amazon, where Sombroek et al.[18] estimate that they cover at least 0.1 to
0.3%, or 6,300 to 18,900 square kilometres (2,400 to 7,300 sq mi) of low
forested Amazonia;[1] but others estimate this surface at 10.0% or more (twice
the area of Great Britain).[12][19]

Terra preta exists in small plots averaging 20 hectares (49 acres), but areas
of almost 360 hectares (890 acres) have also been reported."

So the rainforest doesn't depend on Terra Preta.

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wizardforhire
No of course not, rain forrests happen in any tropical environment. But that
the diversity and resilence of the Amazon Rain Forest, specifically the Terra
Preta islands is unique, and is a direct result of human intervention. That's
what's so interesting and amazing to me about Terra Preta and why I feel it
should not be brushed aside and reiterated whenever possible.

~~~
alisson
I think its a result of a good management of the forest. What if instead of
cutting the trees we manage them to get a better forest? Like pruning and
laying the wood in the soil to decompose faster and better, we can increase
the speed of ecological succession a lot. What if for every hard good wood we
cut we plant more so we can have even more later?

I've being learning and practicing this type of agriculture for 3 years, its
incredible how the soil can improve without adding things from outside, like
fertilizers, just seeds:
[http://vimeo.com/159262175](http://vimeo.com/159262175)

Also by eating raw fruits, the food we should eat the most, we act as a very
powerful seed dispersal, where you through your food there is big chance for
the seeds to germinate, its a mistake to get every trash together and treat
them the same, by spreading rests of fruits and vegetables and just covering
them with enough dried leaves to stop the smell you will plant easily
thousands of trees every year with little effort.

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wizardforhire
Exactly! There's a great book called Wisdom of the Native Americans [1] that
curates a lot of the oral tradition that was only ever recorded during the
first trials with the US government. Reading that book really gives a sense of
the responsibility felt by the individuals to nature. It's easy to extrapolate
from that book and these new studies that are coming out with the population
sizes involved how a comparatively simple societal structure could give rise
to such large ecosystem refinements that made such large populations possible
and subsequently have given us so many of the foods and medicines we enjoy
today. It truly is staggering.

[1]
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1577310799/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdb_t1...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1577310799/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdb_t1_SPyVAbBTRY497)

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botswana99
I'm a big fan of the book 1491 ([https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000JMKVE4/ref=dp-
kindle-redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000JMKVE4/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)) by Charles Mann.

It really changed my worldview about what the Americas were like before
Columbus.

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Florin_Andrei
There's also the follow up called "1493 ..." (I forget the rest).

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notadog
> There's also the follow up called "1493 ..." (I forget the rest).

It's called "1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created"

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purple-again
I am not a historian of any kind.

If we have accounts of massive villages criss crossing the Amazon from early
Spanish explorers then why is the article saying we thought it was empty?
We’re they not believed? Didn’t the Spanish return to the same place with
conquistadors later to fill up all those gold ships? Even if everyone died of
disease in between Spanish forays wouldn’t the second one have noted all the
abandoned villages creating new folklore like the single abandoned Roanoke?

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sutterbomb
I just read the book “1491” which covers a lot on this theme. Recommended.
Short answer: it was always politicized, in various ways, for various ends.
Most of those ways downplayed the size, scope and sophistication of native
cultures.

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52-6F-62
This was also dramatized in the film _The Lost City of Z_ to some extent. It's
worth a watch.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_City_of_Z_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_City_of_Z_\(film\))

~~~
aqme28
Or a read. The book is fantastic.

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qwaitwhat
Elsewhere in this thread there is a discussion about Terra Preta (the local
version of sustainable soil). Simple techniques like this have been used all
over the world for thousands of years, from Eastern China, to the Steppes, to
the cow-dung based agriculture in India.

I wonder if there is an analysis somewhere on how much land will be needed to
completely move away from harsh, "chemical" based fertilizers to naturally
occurring ways to replenish agricultural lands. We don't have to eat meat all
the time and may be 7 billion people could be fed a decent, vegetarian, varied
diet with the existing lands without the modern fertilizers?

On a side note to that point, have you tasted the difference between simple,
unsalted German butters and the ones sold in NYC? Oh my god. You will never
want to come to America on that basis alone. (Sorry, a bit of hyperbole there;
there may be one or two other reasons to not go to the USA).

~~~
alchemism
It's not hyperbolic. I've thought the same about tomatoes from Greece compared
with tomatoes purchased in NYC.

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wand3r
I briefly thought this was a satirical article about Amazon.com's recent round
of layoffs...

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mattkopecki
I clicked thinking it was a sci-fi piece about a future where historians
inspect the remains of our current society. Amazon had grown to be so
significant that the future generations regarded this whole period and all our
cities as Amazon

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personlurking
If anyone is interested in seeing some neat artwork by a pre-Columbian era
society, near the Tapajós river mentioned in the article, type "marajoara art"
into Google Images. The same type of art is still being made in and around the
capital city of Belém, specifically in the neighorhood of Icoaraci, in case
anyone is traveling there.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marajoara_culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marajoara_culture)

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purple-again
On another note, what would have happened if humanity didn’t do a big disease
swap back in the 1500’s. Could a flotilla of South American ships have showed
up in Italy in the 1700’s and caused massive death across the Old World?

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tom_mellior
There is a good book that deals with the question of why it was Europeans that
colonized the Americas (and other places) and not the other way round: "Guns,
Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel)

One of the main points is that the geography of Eurasia allowed easier
transfer of staple crops and useful animals between cultures. More, higher
quality food than elsewhere allowed a better division of labor, and among
other things it made it possible to send flotillas across the ocean.

(I should add that all the other points made in the book are _also_ non-
racist. There is nothing inherent in European humans that made them the
explorers and colonizers; it was simply winning the geographic lottery.)

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jcranmer
The central thesis of Guns, Germs, and Steel doesn't hold up that well when
you compare it to facts. One point to make is that maize was very readily
adopted by North American culture to a strong degree (it took historians a
while to realize that North Americans had in fact developed agriculture
independently of Mesoamerica). By contrast, there was no major transfer of
crops along the Eurasian interior between the independent agricultural
discoveries in Mesopotamia and China.

Another thing to point out: the American staple of maize is very nearly a
complete provider of essential nutrients (just add beans), which cannot be
said for Eurasian crops. And maize is the highest caloric yield crop, followed
by potatoes. As 1491 points out, when the Mesoamericans faced the Spaniards,
the Spaniards were probably suffering from lifelong malnutrition... and the
Aztecs weren't.

The evidence is, in fact, that Mesoamerica in particular won the agricultural
lottery, meaning that Eurasian supremacy cannot be based on agricultural
superiority.

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soperj
He also goes on about how there were no large animals to be domesticated,
completely ignoring the bison, and basically just saying the llama and alpaca
don't count.

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scarmig
Llama and alpaca really don't count. They are much smaller and much weaker
than cattle. You can breed them to be bigger, but there may be limits to that;
there may also be a path dependence to it, in that they started in one
economic niche and there was no reason for a concerted effort over dozens or
hundreds of generations to make them stronger.

Bison are much more problematic IMO for Diamond. The most I've seen on them is
that they are surlier than cattle. But it's not like aurochs were cuddly fur
friends in the beginning either.

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soperj
> They are much smaller and much weaker than cattle.

Same with Donkeys.

Totally agree w/ Bison.

edit: It is worth considering the maximum extent of the Inca Empire roughly
coincided with the greatest distribution of alpacas and llamas in Pre-Hispanic
America, so I think they had a major influence.

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tjr225
This is actually how the aliens who discover earth will describe what we now
call Seattle in a hundred thousand years or so.

~~~
gone35
Or as we describe Mars today, maybe [ _mutatis mutandis_ ].

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foobarbecue
Historical stock data indicates Amazon was once seen as valuable

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ct0
Not the online retailer.

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hateful
I re-read the headline 5 times before clicking on it and reading it again.
Then I read the summary. Then I realized it wasn't the online retailer.

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markhahn
at first read, my thought was "oh, Amazon's getting into building fortified
towns. that makes sense in Trumpistan..."

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_emacsomancer_
But in that case it reads like a report from 100+ years from now.

