The First Americans

[Mungoman]

Learning from the past.

An interdisciplinary team of scientists studying thousands of oyster shells along the Georgia coast, some as old as 4,500 years, has published new insights into how Native Americans sustained oyster harvests for thousands of years, observations that may lead to better management practices of oyster reefs today.

Their study, led by University of Georgia archaeologist Victor Thompson, was published July 10 in the journal Science Advances.

The new research argues that understanding the long-term stability of coastal ecosystems requires documenting past and present conditions of such environments, as well as considering their future. The findings highlight a remarkable stability of oyster reefs prior to the 20th century and have implications for oyster-reef restoration by serving as a guide for the selection of suitable oyster restoration sites in the future.

Shellfish, such as oysters, have long been a food staple for human populations around the world, including Native American communities along the coast of the southeastern United States. The eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica is a species studied frequently by biologists and marine ecologists because of the central role the species plays in coastal ecosystems.

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-ancient-oyster-shells-historical-insights.html

The ultimate conservationists written large in the landscape. It speaks so much about the First Nation People of the South Eastern Coast of the United States - more probably, the whole of the Seaboard of North America.

 

[ramonmercado]

Resisting the invaders.

About 130 kilometers from modern-day Atlanta, a three-story-tall earthen pyramid once rose among the rolling hills of the Oconee Valley.

Atop the mound were red cedar pergolas and two large platforms—one with food scraps and cooking fires, the other with meticulously swept floors and clay hearths simmering sacred drink.

For centuries, this monument was used in ceremonies by an Indigenous alliance of chiefdoms that flourished between the Appalachian slopes and the sea. Then, Spanish colonizers arrived: In 1540, an expedition led by Fernando de Soto blazed through the valley in 11 days. The encounter brought disease, destabilization, and—most archaeologists thought—swift social collapse. Now, a new study shows people in the Oconee Valley—ancestors of the later Muscogee, or Creek tribes—continued their Indigenous traditions at the monument, Dyar mound, for nearly 130 years after Spanish contact.

“They didn’t just stop like, ‘Oh, civilization’s over. We’re going to go ahead and jump into [colonial history] now,’” says Turner Hunt, an archaeologist with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Historic and Cultural Preservation Department who is also Muscogee. Along with RaeLynn Butler, manager of the same department, he advised the authors of the new study. Butler calls the new finding “a big deal, because this solidifies what we already believe to be true … that we’re descendants of the mound builders.”

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...ee-tribes-resisted-colonial-culture-130-years

 

[ramonmercado]

New findings regarding the Clovis Culture.

There is much debate surrounding the age of the Clovis—a prehistoric culture named for stone tools found near Clovis, New Mexico in the early 1930s—who once occupied North America during the end of the last Ice Age.

New testing of bones and artifacts show that Clovis tools were made only during a brief, 300-year period from 13,050 to 12,750 years ago.

Michael Waters, distinguished professor of anthropology and director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans, along with Texas A&M anthropologist David Carlson and Thomas Stafford of Stafford Research in Colorado, have had their new work published in the current issue of Science Advances.

The team used the radiocarbon method to date bone, charcoal and carbonized plant remains from 10 known Clovis sites in South Dakota, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Montana and two sites in Oklahoma and Wyoming. An analysis of the dates showed that people made and used the iconic Clovis spear-point and other distinctive tools for only 300 years. ...


https://phys.org/news/2020-10-tools-north-america-earliest-inhabitants.html

 

[ramonmercado]

It's California Man!

Scientific debate about the most controversial archaeological site in the Americas has entered rocky new territory.

In 2017, scientists reported that around 130,000 years ago, an unidentified Homo species used stone tools to break apart a mastodon’s bones near what is now San Diego. If true, that would mean that humans or one of our close evolutionary relatives reached the Americas at least 100,000 years earlier than previously thought, dramatically reshaping scientists’ understanding of when the region was settled (SN: 4/26/17).

Critics have questioned whether the unearthed stones were actually used as tools. And other researchers suggested that supposed tool marks on the bones could have been created as the bones were carried by fast-moving streams or caused by construction activity that partially exposed the California site before its excavation in 1992 and 1993.

But new analyses bolster the controversial claim, says a team that includes some of the researchers involved in the initial finding. Chemical residue of bones appears on two stones previously found among mastodon remains at the Cerutti Mastodon site, the scientists report in the December Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. The two Cerutti rocks also show signs of having delivered or received hard blows where bone residue accumulated, the team says. The larger stone may have served as a platform on which the bones were smashed open with the smaller stone, possibly to remove marrow for eating or to obtain bone chunks suitable for shaping into tools. ...

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/stones-mastodon-bones-debate-america-first-settlers

 

[EnolaGaia]

Scientific debate about the most controversial archaeological site in the Americas has entered rocky new territory.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/stones-mastodon-bones-debate-america-first-settlers

This ScienceAlert article provides additional details on the latest Cerutti Mastodon site claims and the debates they have (re-)ignited.

https://www.sciencealert.com/mastod...al-theory-about-the-first-settlers-in-america

 

[Mungoman]

For some, I suppose, it would be egg on their face, and their reputation, that mankind crossed over into The Americas at this suggested time.

Who knows...maybe there will be, soon found indicators that there always has been humanity, and it's ancestor on the America's.

 

[PeniG]

It's not just a matter of "egg on face," it's a matter of "huge evidence gap."

Now, as disposing of the Clovis First paradigm has shown, huge evidence gaps can be the result of many things. In American archaeology in particular, these things can include "racism," "poor preservation conditions," "technical difficulties," and "looking in the wrong place." But they can also be the result of nothing being in the gap. Illusions, compromised sites, and hoaxes are all real things and no one wants to be the archaeologist taken in by them.

Archaeology is a conservative discipline; and American archaeology is conservative even by those standards. The number of hugely popular fringe theories of the Graham Hancock and Von Daniken sorts, not to mention religious hobbyhorses, hanging over their heads every time they give a newspaper interview or conduct a site tour is nothing short of mindboggling. I'm sure as many people are excited at the possibilities here and eager to look at the evidence as are dismissive and assume this evidence is all artifact and fantasy - but it doesn't pay to get visibly excited or be an early adopter of any theory that doesn't fit comfortably with what we've got now.

 

[Aether Blue]

If the >100 000-year-old dates pan out, and especially if the > 200 000-year-old ones do, then some of the artifacts could have been made by other species of genus Homo. The broader implications for hominid presence in the Americas would be significant.

Of course, all of this hinges on accurately dating the available evidence. I look forward to further research in this area...

 

[Naughty_Felid]

So these first Americans must have been quite...

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

There's a few posts in this thread commenting on alleged links - both in DNA terms and the similarity of ancient artefacts, between native Americans and the Basque people.

Today's Quora contained an article describing some linguistic coincidences, such as the Basque word for dog (txakurra) phonetically resembling dog in the Alaskan Haida language (Xa).

A quick Google reveals other similarities between Basque and Native American vocabulary:

Basque everything "dena" ; Alaskan the people or all of us "dene"
Basque to eat "jan" ; Mattole (Native Californian) to eat "yan"; Hupa to eat "tang"
Basque: Moon "ilargia" ; Sarcee (Alberta) Moon " Yilnágha "

Even the name Alaska (from the Aleut language) is reminiscent of the Basque alatz (miracles) -ka (suffix denoting continuous action, unending).
So Alaska could mean the land of continual miracles?

There's a long list of apparent similarities given in the link below. Whilst I'm not convinced, it is interesting and would merit further research.

https://faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/eskimo.htm#vocabularycompare

 

[Mungoman]

There's a few posts in this thread commenting on alleged links - both in DNA terms and the similarity of ancient artefacts, between native Americans and the Basque people.

Today's Quora contained an article describing some linguistic coincidences, such as the Basque word for dog (txakurra) phonetically resembling dog in the Alaskan Haida language (Xa).

A quick Google reveals other similarities between Basque and Native American vocabulary:

Basque everything "dena" ; Alaskan the people or all of us "dene"
Basque to eat "jan" ; Mattole (Native Californian) to eat "yan"; Hupa to eat "tang"
Basque: Moon "ilargia" ; Sarcee (Alberta) Moon " Yilnágha "

Even the name Alaska (from the Aleut language) is reminiscent of the Basque alatz (miracles) -ka (suffix denoting continuous action, unending).
So Alaska could mean the land of continual miracles?

There's a long list of apparent similarities given in the link below. Whilst I'm not convinced, it is interesting and would merit further research.

https://faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/eskimo.htm#vocabularycompare

That is bloody interesting Blessed - I've always thought that a language can tell you a history of the person who speaks it, but the coincidences here, with these comparisons are provoking (in a good way).

Much appreciated.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

That is bloody interesting Blessed - I've always thought that a language can tell you a history of the person who speaks it, but the coincidences here, with these comparisons are provoking (in a good way).

Much appreciated.

It is isn't it?
Rather like how Proto-Indo-European has been reconstructed with a fair degree of authority as a Neolithic language and the common ancestor of everything from Greek, Latin and Sanskrit to the English we're using right now.

Regarding the link I posted above, I did feel the author has over-egged the argument a bit by including comparatively recent terms like Eskimo and Baptise, which would have meant nothing to the ancient Basques or native Alaskans and have probably entered both languages through later Western linguistic circulation. A few fundamental terms do appear to have a degree of similarity though. Whether this is down to mere coincidence or can be taken as evidence that ancient Basques crossed the Bering Strait land-ice bridge into Alaska taking their language with them, is debatable.

 

[Xanatic*]

Considering how unique basque is, I should think it more likely alaskan and basque had a common origin from a third place. Atlantis?

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

Considering how unique basque is, I should think it more likely alaskan and basque had a common origin from a third place. Atlantis?

It would not surprise me if the ancient inhabitants of the Azores (the most likely location of Atlantis IMHO) did make it to the Americas.
After all, they made it almost halfway there by reaching the Azores plateau from either Africa or the European mainland.
Just posted some further evidence about ancient occupation of the Azores to the Atlantis thread.

 

[PeniG]

Why assume that Basque is the closer language to the original?

The indigenous languages of Alaska are part of a language group that also includes Navajo. It is far more likely that an Asian language spread both to Western Europe and to the Americas from a common source, and that it throve in the Americas and survives only in one place in Western Europe, than that a group identifiably "Basque" went to the Americas.

Modern ethnic and language identities are the end results of long chains of events. Claiming that any modern group descends from any other modern group is like saying humans descend from monkeys.

 

[Naughty_Felid]

Why assume that Basque is the closer language to the original?

The indigenous languages of Alaska are part of a language group that also includes Navajo. It is far more likely that an Asian language spread both to Western Europe and to the Americas from a common source, and that it throve in the Americas and survives only in one place in Western Europe, than that a group identifiably "Basque" went to the Americas.

Modern ethnic and language identities are the end results of long chains of events. Claiming that any modern group descends from any other modern group is like saying humans descend from monkeys.

Off-topic but thanks for using the word "throve". Not seen that for a while.

 

[Mungoman]

Considering how unique basque is, I should think it more likely alaskan and basque had a common origin from a third place. Atlantis?

I'm of the opinion that there was more than a country called Atlantis, rather, it was an age of Atlantean building around the world for approximately the same length of time, which cataclysmically ended - which begs the thought...If, all these buildings were being erected around the world, what was the culture behind the desire, how comprehensive was it, and where did the knowledge come from, and of course, why did it end.

 

[Endlessly Amazed]

I am not a linguist, but here are my thoughts on the Basque and Native American (NA) language similarities:
it seems possible, but unlikely. Here are some things I would want to know before provisionally thinking that the two languages are related:

What is the percentage of commonalities between Basque and NW North American languages?
What is the percentage of commonalities between Basque and other North American languages?
What is the percentage of commonalities between NW North American languages and other NA Athabascan-descended languages?
What is the percentage of commonalities between French and NW north American languages?
What is the percentage of commonalities between Spanish or Portuguese and NW north American languages?

It may be that the commonalites, if they occur no more frequently than other, historically unrelated commonalities, are just a coincidence. To test this, we would compare the commonalities between known historically related languages, and then among the non-related languages. It would be nice to know, as well, generally how long it takes sub-language evolution to be markedly different. Also, I suspect that language evolution and change (drift) is affected differently if the languages are written as well as spoken during the drift period.

Help! Any fortean linguists online?

ps - wasn't there a recent discussion somewhere on these hallowed threads that the news report of a Basque sheepherder in SW United States finding ancient Basque artifacts was an April Fool's joke?

 

[Endlessly Amazed]

pps - I love throve too!

 

[ramonmercado]

Or could the dogs have gotten there first?

When researchers began to excavate a tunnellike cave on the west coast of Alaska in 1998, they were hoping to discover the remains of ancient bears. Instead, they unearthed something even more intriguing: a tiny chip of bone belonging to the first known dog in the Americas. The find supports the idea that dogs accompanied the first humans who set foot on these continents—and that both traveled there along the Pacific coast.

“This is a fantastic study,” says archaeologist Loren Davis of Oregon State University, Corvallis, who was not involved in the research. “If the coastal migration theory is correct, we should expect to see exactly the kind of evidence reported in this study.”

Researchers once thought humans initially entered the Americas about 12,000 years ago. That’s when thick glaciers that covered much of North America began to melt. This opened a corridor, which allowed people to trek from Siberia across now-submerged land in the Bering Sea, and then into North America on the hunt for mammoth and other big game.

But over the past decade, archaeologists have shown people might have begun to move into North America much earlier. To get around the glaciers, they would have island hopped by boat and walked along shorelines exposed by low sea levels. They traveled from Siberia through the Alaskan archipelago about 16,000 years ago, eventually making their way down the Pacific coast.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...bolster-idea-first-humans-arrived-along-coast

 

[ramonmercado]

The Old Copper Culture.

About 8500 years ago, hunter-gatherers living beside Eagle Lake in Wisconsin hammered out a conical, 10-centimeter-long projectile point made of pure copper.

The finely crafted point, used to hunt big game, highlights a New World technological triumph—and a puzzle. A new study of that artifact and other traces of prehistoric mining concludes that what is known as the Old Copper Culture emerged, then mysteriously faded, far earlier than once thought.

The dates show that early Native Americans were among the first people in the world to mine metal and fashion it into tools. They also suggest a regional climate shift might help explain why, after thousands of years, the pioneering metallurgists abruptly stopped making most copper tools and largely returned to stone and bone implements.

Earth’s largest and purest copper deposits are found around North America’s Great Lakes. At some point, Native Americans learned to harvest the ore and heat, hammer, and grind it into tools. They left behind thousands of mines and countless copper artifacts, including lethal projectile points, hefty knives and axes, and petite fish hooks and awls. Today, it’s not uncommon to meet residents of the region “who have buckets of copper artifacts [that they’ve found] tucked away in their basements,” says David Pompeani, a geologist at Kansas State University, Manhattan, who studies ancient mining. ...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...ericans-were-among-world-s-first-coppersmiths

 

[maximus otter]

Archaeologists Have Found Prehistoric Rock Structures Under the Great Lakes

A Doggerland of the Great Lakes? Underwater rock formations on the lakebed of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron may have been created by hunters thousands of years ago.

120 feet below Lake Huron [lies] an area the size of a football field with dozens of 9,000-year-old artifacts and human-built stone structures that comprise the most complex prehistoric hunting structure ever found beneath the Great Lakes.

When these stone structures were built, great sheets of glacial ice extended south from the North Pole, and water levels were much lower than they are today. The depth of the Great Lakes was up to 300 feet below modern levels, exposing miles more land than we currently see.

Those exposed shorelines were productive, full of wildlife and plants that attracted hungry humans. Early hunting communities likely targeted migrating caribou.

O’Shea and his colleagues have found these stone lines and hunting blinds on the Alpena-Amberley Ridge beneath Lake Huron, most notably in a 300-foot-long ambush area called the Drop 45 Drive Lane. Because the artifacts are so deep, they haven’t been affected by waves and ice or covered by sand and algae.

“I’ve seen campfire rings with charcoal still inside them, stone tools, and even rings that were used to stake down the edges of a tent or tipi,” says O’Shea.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/pl...istoric-rock-structures-under-the-great-lakes

maximus otter

 

[ramonmercado]

An even longer trek.

In 2015, scientists discovered something surprising: that some Indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon were distantly—but distinctly—related to native Australians and Melanesians.

The genetic signal of Australasian ancestry in so far-flung a population sent researchers scrambling for answers. A new study reveals this genetic signal is more prevalent throughout South America than thought and suggests the people who first carried these genes into the New World got it from an ancestral Siberian population.

The finding also sheds light on those people’s migration routes to South America. “It’s a really nice piece of work,” says Jennifer Raff, an anthropological geneticist at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, who wasn’t involved in the study. It shows that the 2015 finding “wasn’t just an artifact. It really is a widespread genetic signal.”

Anthropologists think bands of hardy hunter-gatherers left Siberia and entered the now-submerged land of Beringia, which then connected Eurasia and Alaska, when sea levels were much lower than today—perhaps about 20,000 years ago. Then, about 15,000 years or so ago, some departed Beringia and fanned out into North and South America. These early migrants made good time: By 14,800 years ago at the latest, radiocarbon dates suggest they were setting up camp in Monte Verde in southern Chile. ...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...n-migrants-had-australian-melanesian-ancestry

 

[Mungoman]

An even longer trek.

In 2015, scientists discovered something surprising: that some Indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon were distantly—but distinctly—related to native Australians and Melanesians.

The genetic signal of Australasian ancestry in so far-flung a population sent researchers scrambling for answers. A new study reveals this genetic signal is more prevalent throughout South America than thought and suggests the people who first carried these genes into the New World got it from an ancestral Siberian population.

The finding also sheds light on those people’s migration routes to South America. “It’s a really nice piece of work,” says Jennifer Raff, an anthropological geneticist at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, who wasn’t involved in the study. It shows that the 2015 finding “wasn’t just an artifact. It really is a widespread genetic signal.”

Anthropologists think bands of hardy hunter-gatherers left Siberia and entered the now-submerged land of Beringia, which then connected Eurasia and Alaska, when sea levels were much lower than today—perhaps about 20,000 years ago. Then, about 15,000 years or so ago, some departed Beringia and fanned out into North and South America. These early migrants made good time: By 14,800 years ago at the latest, radiocarbon dates suggest they were setting up camp in Monte Verde in southern Chile. ...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...n-migrants-had-australian-melanesian-ancestry

Very good time, I reckon.

 

[ramonmercado]

Controversy over talk at SAA Conference.

The Society for American Archaeology’s (SAA’s) virtual annual meeting erupted in controversy last week after members realized the organization had allowed a talk arguing against a key U.S. law giving Native Americans rights to the human remains and cultural artifacts of their ancestors

. Although the presentation was made by an SAA member and anthropologist, many archaeologists say they were shocked their professional organization gave a platform to what they consider anti-Indigenous views; they say SAA has not adequately addressed the harm caused by the talk. Some archaeologists are considering leaving and starting a new society.

“There’s a sense [that SAA] is protecting the organization over the people who are involved,” says Kisha Supernant, an archaeologist at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, and a member of Canada’s historic Indigenous Métis. A number of archaeologists note that this incident comes after a sexual harassment scandal at the organization’s 2019 conference, which left many SAA members feeling unsupported. (The 2020 conference was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.)

In 1990, the United States passed a law requiring universities, museums, and other institutions to inform Native American tribes of any Indigenous human remains and artifacts in their collections—and return them when requested. At first, many archaeologists worried the law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), would compromise their research. But today NAGPRA is widely accepted by archaeologists, as most agree that Indigenous people should have the right to determine the treatment of their ancestors’ remains, which were often looted from tribal lands. Since NAGPRA became law, many tribes have collaborated with archaeologists to study their history and ancestors. ...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...st-returning-indigenous-remains-some-want-new

 

[ramonmercado]

Interesting article. I'm reading Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America's Origin by Joseph Kelly; it also goes into detail how Amerindians in Virginia planted and tended forests in their areas. So it's not the first example outside of the Tropics.

For decades, First Nations people in British Columbia knew their ancestral homes—villages forcibly emptied in the late 1800s—were great places to forage for traditional foods like hazelnuts, crabapples, cranberries, and hawthorn.

A new study reveals that isolated patches of fruit trees and berry bushes in the region’s hemlock and cedar forests were deliberately planted by Indigenous peoples in and around their settlements more than 150 years ago. It’s one of the first times such “forest gardens” have been identified outside the tropics, and it shows that people were capable of changing forests in long-lasting, productive ways.

“It’s very creative and sort of unique work,” says University of Kansas, Lawrence, plant ecologist Kelly Kindscher, who was not involved in the research. “Many of us know there are historical imprints on the land, but tend to dismiss Native Americans and Aboriginal people globally in terms of their impact.”

Because these wild-looking forest gardens don’t fit conventional Western notions of agriculture, it took a long time for researchers to recognize them as a human-created landscape at all. Many ecologists argued until recently that such islands of biodiversity, seen also in Central and South America’s tropical rainforests, were an accidental and fleeting byproduct of fire, floods, or land clearing. Without constant maintenance, ecologists assumed, the “natural” forest would quickly take over. ...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...s-were-deliberately-planted-indigenous-people

 

[ramonmercado]

The myth of an empty America is rehashed by Santorum. Colavito also deals with the mythical lost white race in this article.

Speaking at the Young America’s Foundation on Monday, former senator and current CNN pundit Rick Santorum raised eyebrows when he appeared to denigrate Native Americans by suggesting the United States had been terra nullius when white English colonists established the country as a Judeo-Christian religious republic.

“We birthed a nation from nothing,” he said. “I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans but candidly there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture. It was born of the people that came here.” As, should be obvious, there were Native cultures from one end of the Americas to the other prior to the colonial era. The myth of an empty continent peopled only with savages was always a bit of European propaganda used to justify colonization and conquest. ...

Santorum’s remarks are on the surface obviously wrong, but also the same myth that white Americans have bought into since the colonial era. As I documented in my book The Mound Builder Myth (University of Oklahoma, 2020), the myth of savage, uncultured Native Americans served to justify white Americans’ oppression of Native peoples and the destruction of their cultures, eventually leading to the Trail of Tears and the Indian Wars. Andrew Jackson made it quite plain when he told Congress in 1830 that he dreamed of filling the land with “a dense and civilized population in large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage hunters.” Santorum continues a very old myth, almost entirely ignorant of its origins or consequences. ...

In The Mound Builder Myth I describe how a New York talk radio personality, now podcaster, called Frank from Queens, who was once described as “racist” in New York Magazine, has embraced the myth that America had been populated by a lost white race of ancient Iberians, the Solutreans, who were massacred by Native Americans, whom he derisively calls “Beringians.” (The scientific hypothesis of Solutrean contract with ancient America is not supported by most scientists and does not involve white people since the real Solutreans lived before white skin evolved.) ...

https://jasoncolavito.substack.com/...ent-america?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cta

 

[IbisNibs]

Gender equality in ancient Peru:
Men hunt and women gather. But not always
Female hunters likely common in early Americas.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/archaeology/men-hunt-women-gather-but-maybe-not-always/

"Scientists may have to rethink the prevailing view that prehistoric hunting was exclusively the domain of men.

The 9000-year-old remains of a young woman have been found buried with a well-stocked big game hunting toolkit at the Wilamaya Patjxa site in Peru, and subsequent analysis of 27 individuals at sites associated with big-game hunting tools suggests she was not a lone wolf.

In fact, researchers led by Randall Haas from the University of California Davis suggest in a paper in the journal Science Advances that 30-50% of Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene big game hunters in the Americas may have been women."

 

[Frideswide]

she was not a lone wolf.

Silly people! if she'd been a wolf she wouldn't have needed the hunting tool kit!

 

[ramonmercado]

New evidence debunks an old theory but raises more questions.

An international team of researchers has found evidence showing that forest regrowth in Amazonia began prior to the arrival of Europeans in South America. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their analysis of fossilized pollen retrieved from lake beds in the region.

Prior research has found that during the mid-16th century, there was a dip in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere above South America—the dip has been attributed to forest regrowth that occurred after Europeans arrived. Not long after Europeans arrived in South America, the population of Indigenous people began dropping. This was due to the introduction of diseases, slavery and warfare. As the population dropped dramatically, crop fields that had been attended by Indigenous people were abandoned, allowing the land to revert back to forest. The addition of new forest, it has been believed, pulled increased amounts of carbon dioxide from the air. But now, this scenario has come under question as the researchers with this new effort have found evidence suggesting that farmers in Amazonia began abandoning their fields hundreds of years before the Europeans arrived.

The work involved collecting pollen fossils from the bottoms of 39 lakes across Amazonia embedded in sediment. The depth at which they were found in the sediment was used to measure their age. In looking at the pollen fossils, the researchers found that forest regrowth was occurring in the Amazon basin approximately 300 to 600 years before the dip in carbon dioxide levels occurred. They also did not see evidence of reforestation occurring in the two centuries following the arrival of the Europeans. ...

https://phys.org/news/2021-04-pollen-forest-regrowth-began-hundreds.html