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.