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

science.org

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

#61

Post by culi »

netbioserror wrote: post #53
khanhnguyen8386 wrote: post #39

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.

That is definitely not what the Maya did. Or really any civilization with large permanent cities. The record of forest cutting once settlements reach a certain size is consistent and global. The Amazon simply experienced a full civilizational collapse and more than enough time untouched to recover. It might suffice to say: The myth of sophisticated indigenous ecosystem engineers who harmonize with nature is a Europea…

I mean throughout the Americas you see really complex polycultural farming traditions including the famous chinampas. In Mesoamerica you also have the milpa cycle which is a system where you clear most herbs and lightly burn it to grow your crops in polycultures. After a few years, you grow more trees and these fields turn more into managed orchards that include both fruit trees and trees grown for lumbar. Eventually you let it progress into a closed canopy system.

That's just one example, but there are plenty other I could think of that are in very stark contrast to anything you see from European civilizations.

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

#62

Post by culi »

smt88 wrote: post #47
khanhnguyen8386 wrote: post #39

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

10% of the Amazon soil is man-made terra preta.

The paper is just referring to this one civilization. It is definitely not the only Amazonian civilization.

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

#63

Post by culi »

WalterBright wrote: post #59
culi wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true. Mesoamerica had a very rich tradition of papermaking (Amatl) that predated paper in Europe (though probably not Chinese). Colonists severely repressed, criminalized, and even destroyed the paper and writing systems. Thousands of Maya codices were burned in 1562. Almost all pre-colombian libraries ( amoxcalli ) were destroyed We've deciphered Nahuatl and Maya script but Zapotec, Olmec, Isthm…

Sorry, I was talking about North America.

The epicentre of Amatl was North America (Mexico)

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

#64

Post by culi »

shimman wrote: post #29
_heimdall wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been confused by the idea that we know all civilisation that has happened on earth, human or otherwise. Written record doesn't go back very far at all, and even archeological evidence is lacking. Its believed that homo sapiens have been around for at least 300,000 years and yet we think almost all of that was entirely without civilization. We find fossil records of dinosaurs but we have little to no evide…

You would like the book "Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber. It does a lot to talk about modern anthropological studies that corrected a lot of misconceptions about early humans. Really fascinating book, basically postulates that humans have always been imaginative social creatures that were routinely well travelled; and the idea that early humans weren't also politically or culturally advance is wrong. In fact som…

Yes exactly. The myths of native people being hyperegalitarian, one-with-nature types started because colonists came upon cultures in the North East woodlands. Those same people, just a few decades before that were living in Cahokia which was at one point larger than any city in Europe. It was a massive urban city that was also very hierarchical. The hyperegalitarian Algonquian and Haudenosaunee/Iroquois people were basically the result of a successful political revolution that decided to organize themselves like that in response to the hierarchies they experienced.

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

#65

Post by culi »

WalterBright wrote: post #60
culi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if your only definition of sanitation is urban ones, then they had that as well as I pointed out. I think the fact that they had sanitation practices in both urban and rural areas is quite remarkable. Clearly you don't and felt the need to share that opinion. Thanks.

What were these remarkable sophisticated sanitation practices in North America?

Please reread the comment you just responded to. I said it was remarkable (as in, worthy to be remarked) that these practices happened both in urban and non-urban cultures.

The North American cities were certainly more advanced in terms of sanitation than anything in Europe at the time. You had stuff like dual aquaducts differentiating drinking water from washing water and public cleaning crews and urban waste maangement and people bathed daily. While London was throwing its shit in the streets, the Aztecs were building public toilets

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

#66

Post by vasusen »

khanhnguyen8386 wrote: post #39

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.

Yes, few years ago I was really surprised to learn that much of highly fertile amazon soil patches were created by humans using biochar. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta

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

#67

Post by vasco »

culi wrote: post #58
pibaker wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of why Europeans think the americas were pristine and barely touched by human existence is because smallpox was ahead of European explorers and by the time Europeans set foot on many places on the continent, they saw ecosystems that had recovered from human intervention after the local population had collapsed.

I've heard that explanation as well. But I don't know if "recovered from human intervention" is a fair characterization since they couldn't have been more than a decade behind the smallpox/diseases. Estimates range from 5 to 10 million people in the Amazonian Basin by the time Colombus reached the Americas (though some go as high as 20 million). I don't think a few years is enough to erase all trace of human interven…

There wasn't a single civilization there. The same way if you arrived in Greece during the roman period you'd have 2000 year old temples to look at and if you go there now you have both the 4000 year old ones and the 2000 year old ones. In the amazon some of the stuff that is there was ancient already at the time of the Discoveries.

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

#69

Post by ErigmolCt »

khanhnguyen8386 wrote: post #39

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 important lesson is not that ancient people left no ecological footprint, but that a heavily managed landscape can still remain remarkably biodiverse

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

#70

Post by ab5tract »

InTheArena wrote: post #23
culi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well regardless, we know North American natives had extensive sanitation practices and epidemics were quite rare. Syphilis, tuberculosis, intestinal parasites, and Chagas disease were all present but rarely turned into mass outbreaks. Mass graves are almost completely absent and life tables show steady and predictable mortality curves over centuries https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2024802118 https://pmc.ncbi.nl…

I didn;t say that it didn't - in fact, the reality was mass casulty events where common in a way that is unthinkable. We do _ in fact_ have plenty of mass graves for colonists. The lack of evidence of the same on the American Indian side makes me skeptical of the whole narrative. i think it's quite likely that the casualties where in similar scope across two different civilizations, but that the colonialists advantag…

You’re doing a lot of heavy lifting with this word colonist. The mass graves are either “imported criminal” (being in debt was a crime) or slave populations.

And it was much more about the horrid working conditions that these forced laborers were forced to work under.

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