3 ms·

More rural areas yes, but England has been shaped by human activities for a very long time. Rural areas are not more "natural" (as in free from human influence)

• KineticLensman 2y ago
  > Rural areas are not more "natural" (as in free from human influence) than cities. Yes, we have very little left of the primary forest that predated human colonisation over much of the British Isles. Areas that we now perceive as wild countryside are usually anything but. One example is those moorland uplands which (in Scotland) were the result of enforced clearances [0] between 1750 and 1850 and which are now often optimised for grouse shooting. The New Forest, my closest national park, is essentially William the Conqueror's hunting estate and where land use and ownership been very tightly controlled since then. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances
• frereubu 2y ago
  I certainly wasn't contending that current rural areas are more natural (Isabella Tree's book Wilding is really interesting on what "natural" would have meant in the very long term), but if you're talking about the 13th century - which is one of the maps mentioned above and the kind of timescale I was thinking of - then I'd contend those were much more natural compared to now.
  • pyrale 2y ago
    It really depends on your definition of "natural". But in the 13th century, all of European land had been managed by humans for millenia [1]. To consider rural England from the 13th century more natural, you would rely on a definition unrelated to untouched land, but that distinguishes "natural" human activity, and, I guess, "modern" activity ? Anthropic reach extended since then (e.g. compounds tiny enough to get in blood, or scale of activity creating global impact), but when it comes to landscape, we have been the shaping factor for a very long time. [1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236630316_Open_woodland_in_Europe_in_the_Mesolithic_and_in_the_Middle_Ages_Can_there_be_a_connection https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236630316_Open_wood...
• unholythree 2y ago
  True, but these are also medieval farmer’s fields, about as all-natural and organic as possible. They are certainly more natural than a parking lot, and barring very much stone construction would probably rewild within a generation or two. Edit: The more I think of it the stone construction really is the most unnatural part. Especially the ancient tradition of building those little walls using the stones you cleared in order to plow.
• southernplaces7 2y ago
  For example, it's worth bearing in mind that the population of Roman Londinium was larger than that of London until about the 16th century, and the population of Roman Britain was also considerably larger than during most of the medieval period. Given the timber-dependent, agrarian pre-industrial economy of the Roman era, this meant an enormous amount of forest removal (military forts and structures like Hadrian's Wall alone would have accounted for a lot of this.) Thus, any notion of a truly natural landscape of forest in the British Isles disappeared since long, long before the immediately pre-industrial era. Likewise applies for much of Europe even. Again, an example: the landscapes of modern Spain, France and Italy, were repeatedly cleared of forests during their history, particularly by the Roman Empire's needs. Of course, on the other hand, you could also define natural to mean anything allowed to grow without human intervention for X number of centuries, in which case, yes, there have been many truly natural old growth forests in Europe well after Roman times, simply because they regrew during the hundreds of years between the fifth century and later, heavy population growth prior to the disastrous 14th century depopulation stemming from the Black Death and Great European Famine of the early 1300s (thought to have possibly been caused by a massive volcanic eruption somewhere else in the world)