
The myth of the pristine Amazon rainforest - upen
https://www.mpg.de/11147178/amazon-rainforest-pre-columbian
======
rosser
This article is an absurd misstatement of the research. Pretty much no-one is
pushing the notion of a "pristine" pre-colonial Amazon. As the Nature article
that also talks about this paper (both linked in another top level comment)
points out, it's an open question "how much of an influence human activities
have had on the Amazon" — not whether or not there's been an influence at all.

I've spent a lot of time in the Peruvian Amazon, and have talked (language
limitations notwithstanding) with Shipibo-Conibo and Mestizo villagers about
their relationships with the forest, specifically including their
understanding of how that relationship might have been in the past.

That they engaged with it as both stewards and beneficiaries of its bounty
should be a surprise to _precisely no-one_ who has paid the slightest bit of
attention.

EDIT: Contrasting that pre-historical dynamic with the way many treat the
forest today, having internalized Western economic values, is tragic. Clear-
cutting; illegal logging; and slash-and burn, deplete, and move on to the next
patch, are all examples of treating the forest as a resource, instead of as,
for lack of a better word, a partner. And it shows. The place is slowly dying.
Every time I go back, I can see more of the sand that lies mere inches under
the staggeringly fecund topsoil blowing around, and getting into everything.

~~~
woodandsteel
>Pretty much no-one is pushing the notion of a "pristine" pre-colonial Amazon.

Growing up I was taught the pre-colonial Amazon was pristine, and it has been
only in recent years I have started to hear a different story. I bet most
people in the US still believe the pristine idea.

~~~
rosser
I have no idea how old you are, but it's not at all surprising to me that a
narrative like that is the one that propagates through the broader culture.
Among other things, it speaks to how the enlightened Europeans brought
civilization and what-not to the benighted savages of the New World. We like
those narratives...

AFAIK, though, among the people who actually study this, or have cared to look
into these matters for themselves (for whatever reason), that idea has no
traction.

~~~
woodandsteel
I generally agree with what you are saying. My problem was that when you said
"nobody" I thought you meant people in general, not just the researchers in
the field.

Furthermore, you seemed to be saying that articles like this shouldn't be
published because people already know these facts. But I say they are good to
publish because they help correct the views of the general public. Would you
agree?

~~~
rosser
Oh, totally, there should be articles correcting the common notion, for the
people who'd care enough to read them. This site didn't strike me as targeted
at lay audiences, though.

------
whyenot
Here is a better summary from Nature: [http://www.nature.com/news/amazon-
rainforest-was-shaped-by-a...](http://www.nature.com/news/amazon-rainforest-
was-shaped-by-an-ancient-hunger-for-fruits-and-nuts-1.21576#/ref-link-2)

Here is the actual article (published on March 2nd):
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6324/466](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6324/466)

My takeaway: yes, humans _may have_ aided in the dispersal of useful plants
across the Amazon in pre-Columbian times, but other factors were more
important. The authors also did a poor job (as they acknowledge) separating
pre-Columbian effects from those in more recent times.

------
coldtea
> _The myth of the pristine Amazon rainforest - Indigenous inhabitants shaped
> the rainforest by domesticating tree species in pre-Columbian times_

That's not, as it's invariably used time and again, an excuse to do the same
meddling with the rainforest now -- when we have 10,000 times their resources
and effectives in killing the rainforest that these people had.

It's like people don't understand differences of scale...

~~~
M_Grey
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
upon his not understanding it!" -Upton Sinclair

------
namenotrequired
Recommended reading: 1491 by Charles C. Mann.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus)

~~~
notJim
Yes, plus one to this. I read it and found it be thought-provoking, and
simultaneously incredibly sad and incredibly hopeful. It also really upended
various preconceived notions, I, and I think a lot of people had about these
civilizations, which has turned me into someone who rants about pre-Columbian
civilizations at parties :).

------
RangerScience
Clearly someone (with deep pockets) needs to do a forest-as-infrastructure
"startup".

I'm not kidding. If there are people who can make something like asteroid
mining (Planetary Resources), this can totally be a thing...

...that's already sort of a thing (forestry), when you consider that's how
tree farms work - only those are "optimized" for wood production.

Call it... "massively hetero-culture volumetric emergent agriculture", or
something.

~~~
chongli
What I'd really like to see is autonomous drones that can harvest small
berries, seeds, peas, leaves and root vegetables. You could develop
permaculture gardens with extremely high yields and virtually no labour. The
drones could even work to cultivate predatory insects such as ladybugs and
wasps to keep pests under control.

~~~
rectangletangle
That would be cool as hell. There's something oddly fascinating about
autonomous drones flying around the wilderness harvesting/gathering resources,
like some strange futuristic caricature of nature.

~~~
wavefunction
I think the wilderness should be primarily left completely alone with light-
impact human leisure allowed in certain contexts.

I prefer the US public land approach where different lands are graded for
different public uses, and certain areas are off-limits/prohibited to the
general public because of practical concerns.

There is a 4300m mountain right by my hometown and while one can hike over
much of the mountain and the range that surrounds it, certain areas are off-
limits during seasons of the year because the mountain sheep drop and raise
their lambs there.

Why not use your drones to turn your cities into gardens?

~~~
RangerScience
The article is almost about how the rainforests - long considered natural
wonders of the world - are actually pretty heavily "engineered".

There is no doubt in my mind that, if we actually tried, we could make
"batter" forests than "nature". More diversity, more vibrancy, more overall
life.

A more local excellent example is the evidence that native north americans
would do periodic burns, with many varied benefits for the different
ecosystems that underwent such engineering.

------
kafkaesq
The title (which seems to imply that the destruction currently underway in the
Amazon is no big deal, basically) is at odds with the text of the article
itself, which takes pains to say:

 _The impact of the indigenous populations in Amazonia in pre-Columbian times
can in no way be compared with the deforestation seen in the last decades.
“Industrial utilisation has already destroyed one million square kilometres,”
Florian Wittmann says. The figure corresponds to three times the surface area
of Germany and around 20 per cent of the entire Amazon rainforest. “It is of
vital importance that we protect the remaining areas better,” the scientist
concludes._

------
Spooky23
I saw this article awhile ago and was puzzled by it. Unknown ancient peoples
planted productive trees thousands of years ago.

What does that mean with respect to the makeup of the forest thousands of
years later? What does pristine even mean in this context?

------
sn41
The first Western chronicle of Gaspar de Carvajal [1] spoke of large cities
and well-paved roads in a region which is now "pristine" jungle. These
chronicles were dismissed for a long time as fabrication, but it seems now
there is a lot of evidence that Carvajal was speaking the truth.

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

