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Amazon rainforest was home to millions of people before European arrival
- dang 11y agoUrl changed from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amazon-rainforest-was-home-to-millions-of-people-before-european-arrival-says-study-10412030.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amazon-rain....
- patrickfl 11y agoWhen I first saw this post I thought (Amazon.com) came out with a new product called "rainforest." Anyway, so did the natives breed with the Europeans when they "wiped them out" or did the native people migrate to another part of the continent?
- CapitalistCartr 11y agoNeither. They died.
- adventured 11y agoThat's not correct. There are tens of millions of Native American ancestors living across Latin America today. Latin America has roughly 600 million people, they are not all European and African.
- CapitalistCartr 11y agoTrue, but this is in the Amazon in the first 150 years after the Spanish. 90-98% died, mostly of disease. There are more native people now then in 1650.
- meira 11y agoThey first tried to enslave them, but finished killing most of them as they obviously fought against it. Europeans behaving just like what we expect from white supremacists.
- SixSigma 11y agoOne presumes that the non-whites also felt supreme, until the moment that they weren't.
- nostromo 11y agoAt least according to Jared Diamond, the primary killer (95% or so) of the natives was communicable disease. The first smallpox epidemic alone killed about half of the Incas.
- merpnderp 11y agoThese weren't Europeans in the rain forest (which is a large continent of many different peoples), but mostly Spanish and Portuguese. Who married and had kids with native Americans. They weren't racist as we think of it today, they just held little regard for human life, especially little regard for non-christian human life. To put this in perspective, this period came right after 100 years of bloody civil war in Spain that produced some of the most efficient killers the world had ever seen. [EDIT] I shouldn't have said that they weren't Europeans, but that not all of Europe was represented, only Portugal and Spain. That blaming Poland or Germany for the activities of the Spanish was pretty unfair.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoSince when are Spain and Portugal not part of Europe.
- merpnderp 11y agoI didn't mean that they weren't Europeans, only that very little of Europe was involved and didn't deserve the parent's invective.
- benbreen 11y agoThe Dutch controlled large parts of Brazil throughout the 1640s and 1650s, the French had substantial settlements in present-day Guiana and attempted to claim parts of Brazil as "France Antartique," and the English had a number of failed colonies in Amazonia and the Rio de la Plata as well. Heck, even the Scottish attempted to settle a colony in the Darien in present-day Panama. And that's not even including all the buccaneers and slave traders of various nationalities. I'm not interested in wading into the parent discussion, but just wanted to point out that colonialism in Central and South America really was a pan-European phenomenon. Edit: also worth pointing out that the Spanish monarchs for the period we're talking about were the House of Hapsburg and hence claimed extensive territories in what's now Germany, Austria and Holland, so even many land-locked European regions were involved. There are a surprising number of Iberianized German names in colonial documents from Latin America. Bizarrely, there was even a minuscule colonial empire ruled by a tiny vassal state of Polish-Lithuanian common wealth for awhile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Courland_and_Semigallia#Colonization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Courland_and_Semigall...
- LordKano 11y agoYou're not alone. I was thinking about an initiative to publish books on recycled paper or something, then I finished reading the sentence.
- Symmetry 11y agoBasically malaria was unknown in the Americas before western explorers brought it over. From there it became very prevalent in some places such as the Amazon and essentially made mass agriculture impossible there. Then pretty much everyone starved. There were also things like smallpox that devastated people everywhere in the Americas but those were more a one time thing, people were able to rebuild after they passed.
- scrollaway 11y agoGood video on that, which a lot of people might have seen but still worth linking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk
- cubano 11y agoIsn't a devastating, long-term drought a recent and popular theory as well, decimating many Central and South American tribes such as the Mayans and the Aztec? [1]http://science.time.com/2012/11/09/mayans/ http://science.time.com/2012/11/09/mayans/
- meira 11y agoGreat content!
- fatpeopleh8 11y agome too!
- davidw 11y agoI recall reading about this some in the book 1491, which is quite interesting, and talks about how the Americas were prior to Columbus. http://amzn.to/1HQYgSY http://amzn.to/1HQYgSY
- benbreen 11y agoSeconding this recommendation - I'm planning on assigning this book in a college course on the Columbian Exchange next year. It's got the readability of a longform New Yorker article and the scholarly credibility of an academic book. Totally fascinating material that will up end much of what you learned in high school textbooks.
- rhino369 11y agoThe follow up 1493 is also great.
- moultano 11y agoThirded. It took me years to become interested in history, and books like this are what finally broke through.
- marai2 11y agoI don't mean to hijack this thread, but I too wasn't interested in history at all until I read this book: The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power ( http://www.amazon.com/Prize-Epic-Quest-Money-Power/dp/1439110123 http://www.amazon.com/Prize-Epic-Quest-Money-Power/dp/143911...) Which was a fascinating history from the rise of oil in modern times uptil the first Gulf War. I would love recommendations on other history books that got people turned onto history?
- CPLX 11y agoThe Prize is my second favorite book of history/non-fiction ever. My favorite is "The Power Broker" which has a similar sort of style and scale. Highly recommended.
- tosseraccount 11y agoOriginal paper here : http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1812/20150813 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1812/2015... "Here, we review the evidence of an anthropogenic Amazonia"
- tosseraccount 11y agoside note on Amazon Indians: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dna-search-first-americans-links-amazon-indigenous-australians-180955976/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dna-search-firs... DNA Search for the First Americans Links Amazon Groups to Indigenous Australians. a researcher in Reich’s lab, noticed that the Suruí and Karitiana people of the Amazon had stronger ties to indigenous groups in Australasia—Australians, New Guineans and Andaman Islanders—than to Eurasians." I wonder how much was lost by the Amazon peoples by the invasions of the Clovis peoples from Siberia.
- rogerbinns 11y agoI do wish the historians/reporters for this article were more accurate in their use of "decimation". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(Roman_army)#Current_usage_of_the_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(Roman_army)#Curren... The 1491 book put the death rates at around 1 in 20 surviving - ie 19 out of every 20 people dying from disease etc.
- MDCore 11y agoAre you wishing that the current usage of the word (the title you linked to) would stop, and that usage would revert to the older Latin meaning? Unfortunately that's not how language develops.
- rogerbinns 11y agoI am wishing that articles about history are more precise in their usage, since it can be difficult to tell which sense they mean of the word (historical, at the time of the material they are writing about, current meaning applied to back then).
- graeme 11y agoThe definition "destroy a large number of" has been around for centuries. You're contradicting long established usage, while pretending to appeal to it.
- rogerbinns 11y agoI am not contradicting it. From their context it was not possible to tell if they meant the deaths of 1 in 10, a number similar to that, about half of all people, 9 in 10, 99 in 100 etc. I gave the proportions as remembered from the book as that gives a far clearer picture.
- graeme 11y agoHere's the dictionary definition of decimate. The primary definition is "destroy a large number of". This isn't recent - I looked it up in the full OED and it's been around for centuries. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/decimate http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/decimat...
- EGreg 11y agoI wonder if any of this can be used to answer the objections to Biblical stories like Noah's flood: "how did the rainforest come about in a mere 4000 years?" And here we read that the forests were domesticated in the last 3000.
- crpatino 11y agoMany ancient cultures have myths about a great flood or series of floods. It was probably not a single global event, but plausibly to have been based in some shift in climate patterns during protohistoric times.
- jccooper 11y agoThere is also good evidence that there were extensive agricultural urban civilizations around and along the Mississippi. But they were so thoroughly destroyed (by the Little Ice Age, drought, and disease) that by the time European settlers got to those territories, even the descendant peoples had no memory of them. Only a handful of early explorers recorded them, and the principal archaeological traces are earth mounds (some rather large) built in their cities. For quite some time the "Mound Builders" were thought to be a different people entirely from the present native peoples.
- cowardlydragon 11y agoWhy is it this article has the vague overtone of "so we can go ahead and chop it all down, right?" on it? I think it's the "pristine myth" language. Just reeks of let-us-clear-cut-it mentality.
- hanniabu 11y agoTotally agree, I got that feeling from it too.
- CPLX 11y agoI don't get that at all. I got the "how presumptuous of Europeans to think that they brought civilization to the area, it was already there and if anything they may have set back the pace of progress."
- mikebelanger 11y agoI didn't detect that overtone at all.
- dghughes 11y agoSupposedly when Europeans (the later arrivals not Vikings) showed up and disease spread killing many First Nations/Native Americans it caused a dramatic environmental shift. As forests took over the former areas where the first peoples of the Americas lived trees sucked up a lot of CO2 causing the mini ice age in Europe. Interesting if true, yet of course very sad as well but if true that pretty incredible to think of such a connection.
- facepalm 11y agoThat must be a joke?
- datenwolf 11y agoNo it's not. The little ice-age is a well documented period of time of below average temperatures at the end/after the medival ages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age There's still a lot of speculation going on, what caused it, because the explanation for the "Big" ice ages (the periodic tilting of the Earth's axis reaching a position that gives to a colder climate) doesn't fit. So there are a lot of possible explanations. From archeological evidence we know that in the timeframe before the little ice-age begain large parts of the North American population fell victim to disease and/or famine, so one proposed model is, that the regrowth of forrests on (fertile) ground left unmanaged by the decreasing population sucked out a lot of CO2 from the atmosphere.
- hcarvalhoalves 11y ago> As forests took over the former areas where the first peoples of the Americas lived trees sucked up a lot of CO2 causing the mini ice age in Europe. If you want to account for CO2, should consider native americans (north to south) used the slash-and-burn technique.
- wusher 11y agoThe little ice age started before Europeans showed up: > "cold summers and ice growth began abruptly between 1275 and 1300, followed by "a substantial intensification" from 1430 to 1455" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age#Dating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age#Dating
- clock_tower 11y agoFollowing _1491_: home to millions of people, the jungle mostly consisting of fruit-bearing trees (the modern Amazonian tribes are living in overgrown orchards), and in possession of miraculous sanitation/fertilizer technology. Everyone should know about terra preta. It turns out it wasn't a soil-enrichment technique, it was sanitation with a side effect of soil enrichment -- and could be very applicable in the developing world (and the developed world!) today. An experiment in Germany -- look up the paper "Terra Preta Sanitation" -- showed that a slightly modified method of terra-preta production can sanitize human waste to well within First World standards.
- alisson 11y agoTerra preta is formed naturally by falling fruits, leaves and branches that get composted on the soil. There's a agriculture method called agroforestry that make use of this concept, it's very promising for organic farms: https://vimeo.com/146953911 https://vimeo.com/146953911 I know a couple of people here who have "dry bathrooms" (or banheiro seco) that is just a bucket to collect the poo, when you poo you cover it with dry leaves or grinded wood (they are the source of carbon, and stop the bad smell), when the bucket fills up they take it to an area outside far from the house where it will compost, naturally kill the pathogens (because of the heat it produces) and became terra-preta, much better solution than to send it down stream, easier to decentralize and the end result is the best product you could have.
- shanev 11y agoGreat video. Very much in line with Allan Savory's plan to reverse climate change: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl.... Instead of planting trees and pruning he uses rotating herds of animals. Both techniques respect nature and revitalize soil compared to conventional industrial farming practices. I don't understand why there aren't more startups in this space. Climate change is a worthwhile problem to tackle.
- cylinder714 11y agoThe Humanure Handbook (http://humanurehandbook.com/ http://humanurehandbook.com/) goes into the specifics of how to build sawdust toilets and manage waste and compost safely. For those even remotely interested, the e-book is only USD$10, and earlier editions are free for the downloading. If you know someone who lives in the country and is interested in off-the-grid living, or is merely serious about gardening, a copy would make for an unusual gift.
- duaneb 11y agoWhile it's probably in the millions, all projected numbers are extremely rough and work by calculating the percentage likely to have die died in the disease that swept the continent. DO NOT VIEW THEM AS PRECISE OR ACCURATE. However, the evidence seems pretty convincing that the vast majority of the indigenous people died in the centuries following spanish contact.
- adamkochanowicz 11y agoWow, Amazon has so many products.
- gp7 11y agoWith a little digging you can trace back the development of the consenus surrounding this issue over the past 25 years or so, which would probably be worth an article on its own.
- redwood 11y agoSimilar levels of density were reported around the Mississippi river delta
- jMyles 11y agoWhen I think about the Amazon rainforest and those who have called it home in the past 500 years - especially as we learn that they were more advanced than we had supposed - I think back to Terence McKenna's dying hope to save the plant medicines that are being forgotten and eradicated with deforestation. We have no idea what manner of spiritually relevant plants are falling into obscurity cum annihilation, and given the resurgent interest in (and power of) ayahuasca, it's worth taking action to document and remember them.