Many ecologists strongly believe that prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the Americas were a vast wilderness, which was pristine and untouched by mankind. However, many archaeologists oppose this theory. Many archeologists believe indeed, ancient civilizations contributed to the development of the ecosystem.
Researchers seem to have found proof that indigenous people cultivated and domesticated Amazonian plants thousands of years ago, which supports archeologists theory that humans help cultivate the forest.
As a matter of fact, Hans ter Steege, a tropical ecologist at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands, states, “Large areas of the Amazon are less pristine than we may think,” He continues with, “The people who lived there before Columbus left serious footprints that still persist in the composition as we see today.”
Steege and many other researchers found proof that domesticated tree and palm species, such as cacao, cashews, the açaí palm, the Brazil nut and rubber, were about five times more likely to cultivate in the Amazonian rainforest, than non-domestic plants.
A doctoral student at the National Institute for Amazonian Research in Brazil and Wageningen University and Research Center in the Netherlands, Carolina Levis, was the lead author in her study. Levis and her team looked at a database from the Amazon Tree Diversity Network containing 1,170 plots of forests. Most of the plots were 2.5 acres each. She identified 85 plants to analyze.
She and her team had eventually come across a plant that had been domesticated by observing its fruit. For instance, there were some peach palms that made fruit weighing 200 grams or 0.44 pounds. As the fruit grew in the wild, it grew to one gram. Many of these domesticated plants still grow in South America.
As archeologist and ecologist make discoveries, their views on the forests tend to change.
