🔄FROM THE ARCHIVE Researchers say that these trees are evidence of early crop cultivation by ancient humans in Amazonia.
An aerial shot of the Llanos de Moxos region in South America shows the strange isolated mounds of trees that grow among expansive grasslands. Scientists’ explanation for these islands: Ancient humans planted and cultivated crops, making them some of the oldest domesticated plants in history. This article appeared inannual state of science issue as “Forest Islands Amid a Grassland Sea.
One theory suggested that over the past few centuries, ranchers had carved away lush rainforest to create pastures, but left scattered groves of about 300 trees each. Yet that didn’t explain why the trees grew on higher ground. Their gardens piled up fertile compost, which allowed trees to root above the seasonal flood line. Rather than wrecking the environment, the artificial forest islands enhanced biodiversity, providing habitat for rare species to this day. Lombardo “is a real hero in this … really pushing research,” says José M. Capriles, study co-author and archaeologist at Penn State.
The researchers probed some and found archaeological debris similar to the fully excavated sites in 64 out of 82 of the tested mounds between 2,300 and 10,850 years old. From that ratio, they estimated humans erected at least 4,700 of the 6,643 forest islands visible on Google Earth.
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