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Traces of Lost Society Found in 'Pristine' Cloud Forest (nationalgeographic.com)
Deep in Ecuador's lush Quijos Valley, a society thrived -- and then disappeared. But a lake preserved its story. From a report: In the 1850s, a team of botanists venturing into the cloud forest in the Quijos Valley of eastern Ecuador hacked their way through vegetation so thick they could barely make their way forward. This, they thought, was the heart of the pristine forest, a place where people had never gone. But they were very wrong. Indigenous Quijo groups had developed sophisticated agricultural settlements across the region, settlements that had been decimated with the arrival of Spanish explorers in the 1500s. In their absence, the forest sprung back. This process of societal collapse and forest reclamation is described in a new study published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
The Quijos Valley lies in one of the most biodiverse cloud forests in the world, along a pre-Columbian trade route that linked the rich Amazonian lowlands with the high Andes. Thousands of people lived there centuries before the Spanish arrived, farming maize, squash, beans, and even passionfruit in poor soil of the valley floor. The study's researchers found a tiny lake in the valley and dug down into the silt at the bottom, pulling up a plug of sediment that had built up over the last 1000 years -- and found evidence of human occupation going back to the very oldest part of the core. In the oldest layers, scientists found tiny pieces of pollen -- swept from the valley and the surrounding forest into the lake by wind -- from maize and other plants that only grow in open, airy conditions, which told them that humans were cultivating plants on the valley floor. They also found plenty of charcoal bits, indications that people had lit fires nearby.
The Quijos Valley lies in one of the most biodiverse cloud forests in the world, along a pre-Columbian trade route that linked the rich Amazonian lowlands with the high Andes. Thousands of people lived there centuries before the Spanish arrived, farming maize, squash, beans, and even passionfruit in poor soil of the valley floor. The study's researchers found a tiny lake in the valley and dug down into the silt at the bottom, pulling up a plug of sediment that had built up over the last 1000 years -- and found evidence of human occupation going back to the very oldest part of the core. In the oldest layers, scientists found tiny pieces of pollen -- swept from the valley and the surrounding forest into the lake by wind -- from maize and other plants that only grow in open, airy conditions, which told them that humans were cultivating plants on the valley floor. They also found plenty of charcoal bits, indications that people had lit fires nearby.
I know this is slashdot, but RTFA. It is not just a few samples of pollen and charcoal, it is hundreds of years of pollen and charcoal. And then, right when the Spaniards arrived, there is even heavier charcoal. Then the maize pollen and charcoal disappear and are replaced by grasses and fast growing trees then slower growing trees for 130 years. Then there are traces of people again.
Let's be honest, they were annihilated BY the Spanish. The Spanish get a bit too much "forgiveness" or is it just plain forgetfulness, of their history of destruction across the Americas these days. The Spanish owned slaves (African and natives), pretty much created the Atlantic slave trade, they pillaged whole societies for gold and silver to fund a religious war in Europe, they defined the very term "Love Christ or we'll cut you".
One of the most hilarious cases of modern historical blindness are the groups in California that demand we return California to Mexico. Because we "stole" it from them. As if it just fell into their possession and wasn't stolen itself. Then there's the groups of African Mexicans descended from Mexico's slaves who didn't get officially recognized until 2016, even though they routinely would get deported because Mexicans didn't believe they existed.
Don't knock Nat Geo, it is one of the best periodicals around. Recall the recent awareness around plastic straws? That was Nat Geo.
The two issues I hold dear are:
1982 - The Chip/Silicon Valley - Awesome article about the coming of the modern microprocessor and the rise of San Jose/Silicon Valley. Interviews with Steve Jobs, Marvin Minsky, and many others:
http://blog.modernmechanix.com...
1969 - Landing on the Moon
BlameBillCosby.com
I think the use of passive voice is to indicate that there was significant decimation by Spanish-borne diseases rather than than actual extermination by the conquistadors.
That number was made up by a 9-year old boy.
No one has ever been able to validate it, and those that have tried have backed off the claim:
CORRECTION (April 22, 2018, 4:52 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article included an incorrect statistic, attributed to the National Park Service, that Americans throw away 500 million drinking straws a day, or 1.6 a day per person. That figure, which has since been debunked in several publications, originally came from the environmental group Be Straw Free, and does not appear to have been based on serious research. There does not appear to be any reliable figure on how many straws are used per day or per year.