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Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

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Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#41
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your reference: "it is the colonizers who get to write the history" There's a simple explanation for this. The colonists were literate, and would keep diaries and write letters about their experiences. Churches would log births, deaths, and marriages. Printers would print newspapers. Later, these materials were fodder for academics who converted them into historical narratives. The Indians were not literate and…

the Native Americans were highly literate, they just didn't record granular details to ledgers because they didn't have strictly hierarchical institutions that utilized this data for controlling their population there is so much easily searchable resources for this and though it might not be your intent, your comment reads as willfully ignorant for being so broad and bought into the type of 16th century Puritan Euroc…

Highly literate? From your britannica reference:

"No native writing system was known among Indigenous peoples of North America at the time of first European contact"

And yes, I was referring to the North American Indians. I know the Mayans had writing. I even have a book on the Mayan writing system.

> they didn't have strictly hierarchical institutions that utilized this data for controlling their population

People did not write letters and keep diaries in order to control their population.

The book "Empire of the Summer Moon" which is a history of the Commanche empire, and the book laments that their only sources were diaries and letters written by colonists.

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your reference: "it is the colonizers who get to write the history" There's a simple explanation for this. The colonists were literate, and would keep diaries and write letters about their experiences. Churches would log births, deaths, and marriages. Printers would print newspapers. Later, these materials were fodder for academics who converted them into historical narratives. The Indians were not literate and…

If 90+% of whatever society you are from was killed off by disease, and the people who came across the survivors treated them as little better than cattle and systematically destroyed any remaining trace of your society, how literate would history judge you to be?

See my quote from the Britannica.

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#44
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you defend your statement and cite how renewable this domesticated area is? Aren’t most areas deforested for cattle farming (legendarily inefficient) and soy plantations (monoculture)? Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2025.107810

The funny/sad thing about the Amazon soil is its incredibly poor nutritionally. Because there's so much rain, many minerals and nutrients get washed out. In fact, poor soils often result in such high biodiversity.[0] Which means when they slash and burn to grow soy, they only really have a year or 2 where the soil can support that. Afterwards all its good for is cattle (if that). But its so plentiful and demand is so…

> But its so plentiful and demand is so high for beef and soy that we keep doing this

Just to add that about three-quarters of soybeans are used as livestock feed (poultry, pigs, cattle, ...). So really, it's almost all demand for meat and dairy.

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#45

The myth of the 'pristine, untouched Amazon' was always a European trope. Lidar is proving that ancient civilizations were sophisticated ecosystem engineers, shaping the rainforest for centuries without destroying it.

> shaping the rainforest for centuries without destroying it.

More accurately, shaping the rainforest the all dying so the rainforest grows back.

They didn't live under the canopy, they cut it down.

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#46
post #40

The myth of the 'pristine, untouched Amazon' was always a European trope. Lidar is proving that ancient civilizations were sophisticated ecosystem engineers, shaping the rainforest for centuries without destroying it.

if you dont destroy something, its usually close to an idea of pristine. the trouble is slash and burn agriculture and clearing for beef production.

Actually they did something like slash and burn agriculture, but they apparently rotated sites, allowing forest regeneration.

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#47

The myth of the 'pristine, untouched Amazon' was always a European trope. Lidar is proving that ancient civilizations were sophisticated ecosystem engineers, shaping the rainforest for centuries without destroying it.

The headline literally says they lived in 3% of the forest area, which implies that the vast majority of the rest of the forest actually was untouched

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#48
post #47

The myth of the 'pristine, untouched Amazon' was always a European trope. Lidar is proving that ancient civilizations were sophisticated ecosystem engineers, shaping the rainforest for centuries without destroying it.

The headline literally says they lived in 3% of the forest area, which implies that the vast majority of the rest of the forest actually was untouched

Perhaps, but was it untouched by design, or was it untouched because it wasn't economically feasible for them to exploit it?

Those two are very very different when it comes to assigning virtuous environmental brownie-points, and the latter is the default across most civilizations ever known.

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your reference: "it is the colonizers who get to write the history" There's a simple explanation for this. The colonists were literate, and would keep diaries and write letters about their experiences. Churches would log births, deaths, and marriages. Printers would print newspapers. Later, these materials were fodder for academics who converted them into historical narratives. The Indians were not literate and…

If 90+% of whatever society you are from was killed off by disease, and the people who came across the survivors treated them as little better than cattle and systematically destroyed any remaining trace of your society, how literate would history judge you to be?

Literate has a definition that requires the ability to read and write. The North American native population was, by definition, illiterate. They had no written word.

It doesn't mean they were stupid, they obviously picked it up quickly when they were exposed to it

Re: Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

#50
post #47

The myth of the 'pristine, untouched Amazon' was always a European trope. Lidar is proving that ancient civilizations were sophisticated ecosystem engineers, shaping the rainforest for centuries without destroying it.

The headline literally says they lived in 3% of the forest area, which implies that the vast majority of the rest of the forest actually was untouched

not really, the 3pct was just what they scanned with lidars so far.
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