> In the past 40 years, Amazônia has lost more than 13% of its vegetation cover.
This is loss of original forest cover, replaced by non-native vegetation: pasture, agriculture & tree plantations. 13% is about the amount of vegetation coverage domesticated in Amazonia over 40 years. It has been converted from wilderness into a renewable, denser source of ingredients for food, clothing and shelter.
The Amazon rainforest was extensively modified by pre-Columbian indigenous societies. Some anthropologists have even called it a "manufactured landscape". Modern LiDAR mapping has revealed thousands of large geometric ditches, reservoirs, causeways, mounds, and earthen infrastructure.[0][1] Many plants throughout show some degree of domestication[2][3]
And some have even proposed a possible human role in the transition of parts of the Amazon from grassland to rainforest about 10k years ago[4]
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)?
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 high for beef and soy that we keep doing this
This is a continuation of many findings in this direction. It's wonderful to imagine the many societies humans have created, and sad that we'll be able to learn so little about them.
It really is a strange and horrific metaphor, analogy, and parable about the effects of isolation - made all the more distressing because it wasn't intentional. It was just our broader ancestors going about their business as normal people.
Not all - it is very likely this large Amazonian civilization perished before the Iberian colonists arrived in the region. For example, these geoglyphs mapped in the (super interesting!) paper are dated 2k years before the Europeans first arrived in Brazil.
The Aquiry civilization (that this paper is about) actually ceased (either due to collapse or people changing their mind about that way of life, who knows) between 850 and 1000 CE.
And WDYM "anyone"? Obviously plenty of people met them and plenty of civilizations derived from them. By the time Europeans got there, the Amazon Basin was home to 5-10 million people (some models push it up to 20 million). I'm sure traces of that culture and history still mark those indigenous cultures today
The same thing happened to the native North Americans too. When the Pilgrims showed up in Massachusetts in 1620, the whole region between there and maine had been reduced in population by 90+% due to a plague inadvertently brought by traders
The thing was that _any_ outside contact was going to be doom for North America. A lack of resistance and no sanitation equaled a tinder box just waiting for the right plague.
This is loss of original forest cover, replaced by non-native vegetation: pasture, agriculture & tree plantations. 13% is about the amount of vegetation coverage domesticated in Amazonia over 40 years. It has been converted from wilderness into a renewable, denser source of ingredients for food, clothing and shelter.
And some have even proposed a possible human role in the transition of parts of the Amazon from grassland to rainforest about 10k years ago[4]
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/282/1812/201...
You don't achieve a population of 3M people without such extensive landscape modification.
[0] https://www.zmescience.com/science/archaeology/archaeologist...
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02773...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/humans-living-...
[3] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-archaeolo...
[4] https://www.discovermagazine.com/10-800-years-ago-early-huma...
Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2025.107810
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWVATekt4ZA
This is a continuation of many findings in this direction. It's wonderful to imagine the many societies humans have created, and sad that we'll be able to learn so little about them.
And WDYM "anyone"? Obviously plenty of people met them and plenty of civilizations derived from them. By the time Europeans got there, the Amazon Basin was home to 5-10 million people (some models push it up to 20 million). I'm sure traces of that culture and history still mark those indigenous cultures today