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.<p>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.<p>That they engaged with it as both stewards and beneficiaries of its bounty should be a surprise to <i>precisely no-one</i> who has paid the slightest bit of attention.<p>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.
Here is a better summary from Nature: <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/amazon-rainforest-was-shaped-by-an-ancient-hunger-for-fruits-and-nuts-1.21576#/ref-link-2" rel="nofollow">http://www.nature.com/news/amazon-rainforest-was-shaped-by-a...</a><p>Here is the actual article (published on March 2nd): <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6324/466" rel="nofollow">http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6324/466</a><p>My takeaway: yes, humans <i>may have</i> 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.
><i>The myth of the pristine Amazon rainforest - Indigenous inhabitants shaped the rainforest by domesticating tree species in pre-Columbian times</i><p>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.<p>It's like people don't understand differences of scale...
Recommended reading: 1491 by Charles C. Mann.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A...</a>
Clearly someone (with deep pockets) needs to do a forest-as-infrastructure "startup".<p>I'm not kidding. If there are people who can make something like asteroid mining (Planetary Resources), this can totally be a thing...<p>...that's already sort of a thing (forestry), when you consider that's how tree farms work - only those are "optimized" for wood production.<p>Call it... "massively hetero-culture volumetric emergent agriculture", or something.
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:<p><i>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.</i>
I saw this article awhile ago and was puzzled by it. Unknown ancient peoples planted productive trees thousands of years ago.<p>What does that mean with respect to the makeup of the forest thousands of years later? What does pristine even mean in this context?
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.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspar_de_Carvajal" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspar_de_Carvajal</a>