>Planting their orchards, the first Amazonians transformed large swaths of the river basin into something more pleasing to human beings. In a widely cited article from 1989, William Balée, the Tulane anthropologist, cautiously estimated that about 12 percent of the nonflooded Amazon forest was of anthropogenic origin—directly or indirectly created by human beings. In some circles this is now seen as a conservative position. "I basically think it's all human-created,"<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/30...</a>