A new study suggests patches of fertile soil in the Amazon, known as dark earth, were intentionally produced by ancient Amazonians as a way to improve the soil and sustain large and complex societies.
The Amazon river basin is known for its immense and lush tropical forests, so one might assume that the Amazon's land is equally rich. In fact, the soils underlying the forested vegetation, particularly in the hilly uplands, are surprisingly infertile. Much of the Amazon's soil is acidic and low in nutrients, making it notoriously difficult to farm.
"If you want to have large settlements, you need a nutritional base. But the soil in the Amazon is extensively leached of nutrients, and naturally poor for growing most crops," says Taylor Perron, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT."We argue here that people played a role in creating dark earth, and intentionally modified the ancient environment to make it a better place for human populations.
"When I saw this dark earth and how fertile it was, and started digging into what was known about it, I found it was a mysterious thing -- no one really knew where it came from," he says. In addition to these observations, they also conducted interviews with villagers to document the Kuikuro's beliefs and practices relating to dark earth. In some of these interviews, villagers referred to dark earth as"eegepe," and described their daily practices in creating and cultivating the rich soil to improve its agricultural potential.
In other words, the team was able to show for the first time that ancient Amazonians intentionally worked the soil, likely through practices similar to today's, in order to grow enough crops to sustain large communities.
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Ancient Amazonians intentionally created fertile 'dark earth'The Amazon river basin is known for its immense and lush tropical forests, so one might assume that the Amazon's land is equally rich. In fact, the soils underlying the forested vegetation, particularly in the hilly uplands, are surprisingly infertile. Much of the Amazon's soil is acidic and low in nutrients, making it notoriously difficult to farm.
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The mystery behind the Amazon's fertile patches of landA new study shows that the Amazon's dark earth was intentionally produced by ancient Amazonians as a way to improve the quality of the soil.
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