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"Amazonian dark earth" was the work of ancient humans
- jpm_sd 3y agoI think this has been studied for at least 20 years already? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta
- Symmetry 3y agoCharles Mann had a really good book on the pre-Columbian Americas back in 2005 which covered this as well as a bunch of fascinating other things.
- davidw 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A...
- hamburga 3y agoFrom what I remember it was just a tease at the very end of the book (1491). It seemed to be on the frontier of the research at the time the book was published. They knew about the existence of black earth (terra preta) but were really only speculating about how much human effort and over how much time was involved to create it.
- specialist 3y agoAside: I'd like to know more about the critters within terra preta. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta#Microorganisms_and_animals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta#Microorganisms_and... Our volunteer group is creating new urban forests. Digging out invasives and planting natives. Our soil is terrible. Glacial till (?) and gravel. In addition to mulch and soil treatments, someone suggested transplanting some dirt from healthy forest areas. Maybe there's fungus, bacteria, or whatever, that will help our new plants. Couldn't hurt, right?
- aaron695 3y agoIf you want to know more about biochar this a good book, I got it around the hood, then bought the meat world one because I thought it was quite good. Lots of pictures and easy read - https://www.amazon.com/Gardening-Biochar-Supercharge-Bioactivated-Nutrient-rich/dp/1612129552/ https://www.amazon.com/Gardening-Biochar-Supercharge-Bioacti... Or jump straight to the science with a meta-analysis - "A global dataset of biochar application effects on crop yield, soil properties, and greenhouse gas emissions" - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-023-02867-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-023-02867-9 Or the million Youtube vids etc. Blah blah sequestering CO2, what I like is it's a permanent soil amender, your work in the garden lasts 100 years, plus it's a solution to all carbon rubbish. Not quite got grass clippings sorted yet, but trying to hack a solution. I'd love to know if a solar oven would work.
- wolverine876 3y agoWhat is biochar exactly? I see some relationship with the Amazon Dark Earth in the OP - is it the same thing? Related? EDIT: From the OP: ADEs have up to 7.5 times more carbon within compared to the surrounding soils. As ADEs accumulate, the carbon becomes trapped underground, where it remains stable for hundreds of years – locking it away and delaying its entry into the atmosphere. It's not clear why the carbon within ADEs behaves this way, but scientists suspect that it has something to do with "black carbon", also known as "biochar". This key ingredient is made from organic material that has been turned to almost pure carbon at high temperatures, in the presence of little oxygen. The process doesn't emit as much carbon dioxide as charcoal production, but leads to a fine, crumbly black product that has been found in ADEs across the Amazon. So how much carbon does biochar release? What is the climate impact of it? > Not quite got grass clippings sorted yet, but trying to hack a solution. I'd love to know if a solar oven would work. This is awesome work! I hope you write up the results, and even Show HN.
- incompatible 3y agoPresumably, if a form of carbon in the soil is inert, then it doesn't do much to help agriculture, although it would be sequestering carbon. Organic matter in the soil will be normally be decomposed fairly quickly by soil bacteria and fungi, and these nutrients will be available to plants; dead plant matter then goes back onto the soil. Edit: the Nature article linked above said "Biochar incorporation can increase crop yield by ameliorating soil physical structure, improving nutrient availability, and enhancing microbial activities"; whether it does this without decomposing, I'm unclear.
- felipeerias 3y agoRuins of ancient cities have been found on different sites in the Amazon. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuhikugu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuhikugu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marajoara_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marajoara_culture We often assume that the Amazon tribes have remained unchanged since the dawn of time, but at least some of them are likely to be survivors of urban collapse.
- Bjorkbat 3y agoKind of wild to think that all these uncontacted tribes could actually be more like post-apocalyptic survivors rather than a glimpse at our distant neolithic past. Definitely more fun to speculate about.
- hamburga 3y agoThe same holds for most surviving hunter-gatherer groups across the world. Survivorship bias in the extreme. The only survivors are ones in fringe habitats away from the best productive land. We have no view into the larger, richer, more complex cultures that were the norm back then.
- carlosjobim 3y ago> The only survivors They're not survivors any more than anybody else alive today. And their relatives are still on the best productive land, but assimilated into a different culture.
- dividedbyzero 3y agoTheir cultures are (more or less) survivors from a time when their mode of subsistence was the norm even on (most of) the best productive land. We know majority hunter-gatherer lifestyles have been incredibly diverse, but almost all detailed records deal with people on very marginal land that have all been influenced by industrial societies in more or less direct ways, because those were the only ones still available when people started recording them at least semi-properly. Our window into that past is more like a single discolored piece out of a huge intricate stained-glass window. Judging by the impact that indigenous societies and indigenous philosophy from the Americas had on contemporary European thought in the 18th century, it's not a stretch to assume that we've lost a ton of hard-won and almost irreplaceable data on what makes humans function as they do when part of a society and what alternatives to our modern societies work as well or possibly even better.
- tambourine_man 3y agoNot much new or of substance in this article, unfortunately.
- magneticnorth 3y agoIt was new to me; I think the widespread ADE and its role in ancient Amazon settlements isn’t very widely known yet. I found it fascinating.
- tambourine_man 3y agoSorry if I was dismissive. Yes, it's fascinating, it's something I've been following for years, so I figured it was common knowledge. Much more will be coming in the next years with LIDAR tech becoming wide spread. All great river basins in the world sprouted civilizations, why wouldn't the greatest river of all? It's just that it's easier to spot ancient constructions in the desert than beneath the foliage of the densest forest in the world.
- Jedd 3y agoPhrasing like 'Now businesses are attempting to capitalise on this ancient method ...' is true, but as others here have noted, this is not a new area of research, or a new area of business. Can recommend "Burn - Using Fire to Cool the Earth" (2019) by Albert Bates & Kathleen Draper- which looks at various, often surprising, uses for biochar. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43866589 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43866589
- dukeofdoom 3y agoI think this proves that humans can be beneficial to their environment. Much of what we think of as wild jungle actually isn't. The trees that grow in a jungle have faced selective pressure from animals and humans for thousands of years. Humans are just better at it, because we garden. In the case where humans were selecting, and planting trees that produced an edible fruit or nuts . (that also benefitted other animals) it changed the ecology of the forest.
- soperj 3y agoAnts garden too, and have been doing it for longer, they don't kill all the other bugs, plants and fungus to do it either.
- dukeofdoom 3y agoThat can't be true. Where Ants build their colonies, they also likely displace or destroy things that were in those places in the ground previously. Ant colonies can be huge. They can span miles. They also will attack other insects and prey on them. They even sting humans. And have been used by indigenous people to torture captured prisoners during their conflicts.
- boffinAudio 3y agoThere are plenty of ant species that are cooperative and integrate well with their environment. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/did-you-know/farmer-ants-and-their-aphid-herds https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/did-you-know/farmer-ants-a...
- soperj 3y ago"all the other"
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoWell, neither do the humans. Livestock biomass is now larger than wild animal biomass.
- hinkley 3y agoI still have an imaginary bet running with myself that we will eventually discover that Terra preta was the result of some form of pit roasting technique. Dig a hole in a different spot for each celebration.
- SantalBlush 3y agoThe simplest explanation is that they were just as intelligent and capable as other people of their time, and figured out a way to improve their soil.
- 6510 3y agoFor laughs I one time gather a bunch of research (from the cutting edge to the practically applied) to do 1) large scale solar distillation for sea water desalination and for ethanol production. Think big arced mirrors focused on liquid salt tubes. 2) very large cannabis fields. If you water it it will grow in the desert without further aid. 3) yeast to turn the leaf materials into ethanol. Apparently a tiny chunk of Sahara could make a serious dent in energy consumption. (One can of courses also use biomass to make biogas or solid fuel) Yield is up to 1200 ton per square km. 205.2 ton ethanol per km2 (261 400 liter) 1 539 646 kwh/km2 If we use 100 000 000 barrels of oil per year 162 820 000 000 kwh The farm would be 0.1 million km2, the Sahara is 9.2 million km2, it would take little over 1%, say 2% US total farmland area is 3.6 million km2 Recycling yeast and chemicals gets much better at scale. We know how to pump crude into container ships but oil is a dangerous substance. Ethanol doesn't require state of the art safety measures, it can just spill, the boats can just sink without horrific consequences. On the contrary. The process on that scale leaves behind a lot of stuff that will have to be used for something. Seeds and seed oils are very valuable, hempcreed and bio plastics can be used for construction, can make fabrics, clothes, paper etc One could also make solar biochar and enhance the soil. Hemp by it self enhances the soil. Add some compost and some bio char and you should be able to grow other things too. The surprising thing to me was that there is a lot of ongoing research for each component of the plot. We kinda know how to do all of it but we also know very little, there is much to learn still.
- elmolino89 3y agoI seriously doubt that except fresh produce in some hellishly hot desert country large scale agriculture using desalinated water makes sense. Much less so if you don't grow some cash crops but have to process it then transport the final product. There are almost "miracle plants" like Salicornia which can be watered with sea water, but these do not have growth rates of more picky plants like corn or hemp.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoWait, is that really energy positive including desalination? I thought that was so expensive (both energy and $) that it wasn't particularly practical
- onetimeuse92304 3y ago> Now there's growing interest in the lessons their methods may hold for societies today I don't know how to tell this without being condescending, but do you guys even understand how farming works? The fertile soil is a result of a long process of bringing organic material and ash and depositing it on the field. Exactly the opposite of what we are doing today When they lived in the rainforest, they would gather whatever leftovers from eating, possibly their feces, decaying matter, and deposit it all on the field. They would keep hunting, they would keep gathering, and all that hunted and gathered material would end up on the field. Maybe they would compost it separately and then drop it on the field, maybe they would drop it on the field and the field would be in effect the composting area. Over hundreds or thousands of years this would create those amazingly fertile fields. It is very easy to see how this developed. They probably have noticed that if they keep throwing their leftovers or feces in a particular area, everything starts growing better there. The same if you throw out ash. Which they had lots of beacuse they were burning a lot of wood every day, living in the rainforest and not facing energy price hikes. If you have a village and you hunt and gather every day, if you constantly keep burning wood fire and spread it all around your village for thousands of years -- guess what -- whether you planned it or not you will create those fields because I bet nobody would be trucking the garbage far from the village. The problem is we do not live in the rainforest and we do not have so much organic matter to cover our fields. And the leftovers from what we eat we dump mostly into landfills. Our feces are also escaping the system and are not providing matter back to our fields.
- boffinAudio 3y agoDid you miss the key fact that this Amazon miracle earth spreads itself when it is dug into other soils?
- samcheng 3y agoIn California, at least, yard waste and kitchen waste are diverted to composting facilities by law, and over half of biosolids (feces) are composted as well. I imagine (hope!) that the rest of the world will follow. And it's not only about soil fertility. If this waste decomposes in a landfill, it becomes a major producer of methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas. https://calrecycle.ca.gov/Organics/SLCP/collection/ https://calrecycle.ca.gov/Organics/SLCP/collection/ https://calrecycle.ca.gov/Organics/Biosolids/ https://calrecycle.ca.gov/Organics/Biosolids/
- tern 3y agoIf you haven't read the story of the first Westerner to travel the length of the Amazon, it's perhaps the most incredible adventure of all time: "River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana and the Deadly First Voyage through the Amazon" https://a.co/d/cmtyj0l https://a.co/d/cmtyj0l Highest recommendations
- JoeDaDude 3y agoOrellana's voyage down the Amazon river is the subject of one episode of Michael Wood's Conquistadors, a series of travel videos linked below. Orellana described seeing large communities and cities from the river, recording the existence of a large population that had been decimated by the time the wider world ventured into the Amazon. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5mko7v https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5mko7v
- mista2nith 3y ago[dead]
- euroderf 3y agoLet's say I have a small place in the country, with a vegetable patch and also a compost bin that I'm barely competent to operate. Maybe I also have access to chicken guano. And of course grass clippings, probably containing weeds too. How do I leverage this to make biochar, and then how do I use the biochar to improve the vegetable patch ?
- elmolino89 3y agoMaking diy biochar imho makes sense if you have dry, wood-ish material (Arundo, bamboo, branches). Otherwise you are likely to produce a lot of smoke for little biochar. As for the garden organic waste one can tie itself in knots trying to balance this or that. In my experience shallow trench composting works just fine. You do not get a smelly pile leaking fluids, packs of slugs / swarms of flies. No extra work (mixing, distribution). Earthworms will also thank you. You may have issue with hardy weeds and rats, so you milage may vary. One can ferment the weeds in a plastic bag before buring them lowering the chance of spouting, but this is extra and quite smelly work. One can also dig deeper(+30cm of earth cover). Less chance of weeds and animals digging to snack on a rotten carrot.
- yetihehe 3y agoMaking biochar is just heating bio-waste in a container to high temperature, but to not let it actually burn. Like making charcoal, but slightly smaller temperature. Biochar - bio-charcoal.
- nissarup 3y agoMake biochar, there are many guides on the interwebs. Add continuously to you compost bin along with the normal stuff you put in there. When the compost is done, add it to the garden.
- saalweachter 3y agoNote the step of adding it to your compost, not to your soil directly. The charcoal acts like a sponge for water soluble nutrients in the soil; if you add it to the soil directly, it will suck them out of the soil first, temporarily depleting it. Long term it acts as a reservoir, but you want it to go into your garden full.
- kvgr 3y agoIf you want to know more about this kind of topic, I am reading nice book about history of americas before europeans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A...
- contingencies 3y agoWhat struck me in the article was the description of re-vegetation from farmed species. I was just checking out the last 100 years of aerial photography here in Sydney and it was frankly shocking how much things have changed and reverted over time. Original forest, then totally denuded, then dense vegetation, then back again over few decades. In a tropical area such as the Amazon I'm sure that you could see a totally cleared area reclaimed by jungle at rates exceeding a meter a month, even a meter a week! One can really appreciate that they didn't build in stone for fun ... anything else would have disappeared the moment they took a break from weeding.
- cracrecry 3y ago"When he plunged the red and gold flag of Spain into the ground on the Paria Peninsula in Venezuela, it marked the beginning of a "great dying". It's been estimated that 56 million indigenous people were killed across the Americas by 1600 – so many, it cooled the Earth's climate." Oh man,What a piece of bullisht! comming from what was a respected medium in the past like the BBC. There are some people that believe that millions of people could have died because of the illnesses coming from Europe, that at the same time came Asia and Africa as they are united. To say that those people were killed on purpose is a piece of sht, and propaganda without proof. Not to mention the 50 million that is absolutely outrageous. Not even the British and North Americans(now US and Canada)native extermination had such high numbers, and that was on purpose("the only good Indian is the dead Indian" founder's fathers quote) and using technology available in almost 20th century. Spaniards and Portuguese in 1600s were very small numbers and technology was more advanced but not that much. They conquered South America with the help of native tribes, something that is well documented. And the queen of Spain made native Indians that had baptised by law equal to Spaniards. Something that people in the USA only made in the middle of 20th century with Indians, Mexicans(from conquered territories like California) and black people.
- philbo 3y agoThe passage you quote says "across the Americas", so presumably includes both the northern and southern continents.
- __alexs 3y agoA genocide that was accidentally extra effective because you happened to be resistant to a different set of diseases to the other people is still a genocide. They the same playbook as the founding fathers did.
- biorach 3y ago> To say that those people were killed on purpose The article does not say these people were killed on purpose > And the queen of Spain made native Indians that had baptised by law equal to Spaniards The reality on the ground was very different nearly everywhere in Spanish America. This is well documented in many reputable histories
- jimnotgym 3y agoWhat is the difference between biochar and charcoal? It would be good to hear what is physically different, as well as what is different in the process
- jimnotgym 3y agoIs the large amount of pottery found in the biochar layer to do with how they made the biochar, do we know?