Is the Amazon Forest a man made place?

[Last Conformist]

I find it hard to believe that advanced agriculture was wiped out in Amazonia when it wasn't in places like Mesoamerica and Peru, where the European impact was more drastic.

I suppose I should tell the uni library to by Mr Mann's book ...

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
I find it hard to believe that advanced agriculture was wiped out in Amazonia when it wasn't in places like Mesoamerica and Peru, where the European impact was more drastic.

I suppose I should tell the uni library to by Mr Mann's book ...

The difference here is that farming wasn't so much as working the land as it was forestry in Amazonia. The square footage of land that these orchards took up was probably proportionate to the amount of fruit grown. So, as people died, there were less farmers to trek the distance to support the trees. In traditional farming the distance and energy needed would have been much less to produce the same amount of food.

[Ecthy]

Nice theory there, Oerdin, because that's what it is so far.

Does it say the whole rain forest area wasn't all that foresty in those days? Yet, at the same time, you mention "all the rain" as a precondition for lack of stone. I always was under the impression that the forest and the climate in that region entail each other in a way. The answer to this might very well be in dimensions though. For example, there always was forest there, just not quite as much.

TMM - SE?

[Last Conformist]

In any case, most of the forest in amazonia is pretty recent - during the glacial maximum, most of it was too cool and dry to sustain rain forests.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
In any case, most of the forest in amazonia is pretty recent - during the glacial maximum, most of it was too cool and dry to sustain rain forests.

This is very obvious in central Africa, most chimp and gorilla populations are only found in places that stayed rainforest during glacials.

[Harry Tuttle]

Hmmmm, we did have that ice age from 1500-1800 AD so maybe the landscape was much different...

[child of Thor]

I remember somewhere seeing/reading something related to this about the ancient civillisations of the Inca's and people like them.

And indeed these group of peoples(mayans/Aztecs and others that pre-date them etc) were very advanced workers of the land. massive irrigation projects that are still being discovered over the south americas etc. In fact i've seen some archeologists pose the theory that massive and quick deforestation is what killed these various peoples of in some cases.

And having lived in the tropics i can certainly see it is possible for Jungle to grow back very quickly left to its own.

Still the part of South America that contains the 'amazon forrest' is a massive area, and i suspect the bits that the books talks about are the area's most heavily settled by the local Indian tribes.

I've also read books/accounts from around the same time period(but mostly based around the carribean), that discribes the "awfull immense suffication of the jungles".

I suspect man's ussage of the land could have helped the Amazon establish in some areas?

What i think we can't discount is that what ever size the amazon is/has been - it is very much an area of the world that is the lungs of the planet and getting rid of it is pretty stupid.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle
That's a pretty cool read Oerdin

[Chemical Ollie]

I don't think the jungle is man-made, but definitely influenced by man, among all the other inhabitants.

I just read Michael Crichton's State of Fear, which raises some topics like this, despite being pure fiction.

[Chemical Ollie]

My forest corporation has purchased large areas of land in Brazil. This land was rainforests that was chopped and used for cattle ranges in the 50's and 60's. Now my company use the flat areas for eucalyptus plantations (pulp wood), while the steep valleys in between are left uncultivated. Since then, the rainforest has regrown in the uncultivated lands. A lot of tropical species grow very fast.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle
That's a pretty cool read Oerdin

[Barinthus]

good reading. Will have to check out the book.

[Maniac]

Interesting read. Does the book state some estimate on the population density supported by this 'tree farming' method?

Anyway, as Child of Thor says, the Amazon being influenced by humans in the past is no excuse to just chop it all down now.

[Last Conformist]

@Maniac: You're implying that the fact the planet is very cool and dry by the standards of the last half-billion years isn't a reason to put NYC under 50m of water?

[Barnabas]

any of you remember the movie from the 80´s the mission? with jeremy irons and either de niro or al pacino (I always confuse them)

the indians of that movie are guarani indians, the movie is ambiented in paraguay and south brazil were they lived, they were farmers and quite civilized.

The word Argentina comes from Silver, Argentum, because the guaranies told the spaniards that if they followed the river plate (rio de la plata) (silver river) they would eventually get to the silver (they meant the incas)

And the people from the amazonas.

The indians from the amazonas are tupi gauranies, they all belong to he same family, the guaranies in fact they had recently migrated to the territory of paraguay when the spaniards met them, so probably before the diseases wiped them, farming was quite widespread in the amazonas.

It was in (the territories of) Argentina in the south and the usa in the north + caribean islands, where the non farming cultures were located, which is funny since the missisipi plains and the pampas are 2 of the 3 most fertiles areas in the world.

I used to think that projections of 50 million inhabitants in pre columbian america were ridiculous, in school I was tought that before columbus there were 6 million people in the inca empire, 6 million in the aztec empire and 12 million more in the rest of the americas.

which makes sense, Spain has only 7 million people at that time (8 million when portugal was anexed), proabbly those relatively more primitive Incas, Aztecs cultures could not be more populated than spain.

But then you start to see that andean and mexican civilizations were not islands of civilizations in a sea of savages, and that, not so developed yet, quite densely populated farming cultures existed in many other places like colombia, venezuela (chibchas), amazonas, paragauy and in the usa too, and it no longer seems ridiculous.

Although 100 million people, I dont believe that at all.