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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 it's a hard battle to win, but surely it's about time that Slashdot did something about this spam.
Surely they have tools for controlling spammers other than moderation.
I don't think anything digital is meant by "... hacked their way through vegetation so thick they could barely make their way forward."
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Er...what's the "news"?
And who knew that "National Geographic" was still around? That was the yellow-spined magazine college-educated boomers kept stacked in their houses for some reason.
Flag it, flag it, and flag it some more. If we all do it hopefully they'll get sick enough of the giant queue of reports and do something. As much as the v2 ones break my balls, I would be happy with captchas at this point. Word and IP filters are useless now days.
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If you browse at 1 or higher, it eliminates the garbage stuff.
But then you miss the interesting points which may fly in the face of Slashdot group think, but are valid nonetheless. I read at -1 and apply my own mental filters. I don't need the opinion of the collective to decide that for me.
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And you also eliminate the interesting AC comments.
They will get modded up.
That's what I do too. But there are other options.
Other options than setting filters at +1, and still seeing everything under +1?
I'm all ears.
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No, no, no, I didn't say your other options would still allow you to see everything under +1. Stay with us here please.
AC posting is /. core functionality. It allows someone to post inside scoop without having to worry about getting doxed.
No it doesn't. You only need a throwaway email account to get a slashdot account, which is already enough to not worry about getting doxed so long as you don't use it anywhere else.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You have pollen from cultivated crops. There's only one way they get there, somebody nearby was planting.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's exactly why eliminating AC isn't a helpful suggestion. There are plenty of troll accounts that are used for spamming, and it's very easy to create new ones. If the spammers use troll accounts, they might also post enough good comments to accumulate the karma to post with a starting score of 2. That would actually make the spam mote visible than it is now.
The desktop interface does a pretty good job of making spam threads easy to ignore. Adding that functionality to the mobile interface would make the spam less annoying for mobile users. It would be interesting to train a spam filter to automatically flag potential spam comments, just like spam email is filtered. Add an option to suppress those comments from view, independent of moderation. Let moderators and editors decide whether the spam flag should be removed from those comments. Also, let new comments be recommended as spam to train the filter for new spam posts.
It's easy to ignore a spam thread like this one. What's annoying is when there's individual fake creimer comments added to otherwise legitimate threads, intended to appear like non-spam comments. Those are more insidious than the fake APK posts.
After the thirst time an identical post is submitted (globally tracked) rather than actually add it to the discussion store it in a cookie so only the poster sees it.
Not perfect but if they did it quietly it'd probably nuke most of these.
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.
Man once again spoils Pristine Mother Earth in his demonic quest for survival and dominance?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
The relative amounts of such things are how you know humans were there. Your statement is like saying finding a human skeleton doesn't indicate a settlement because they could have been a vagrant who washed up from a Peloponnesian shipwreck and was dragged inland by a hungry jaguar. Surely the scientists can tell a puff of wild maize from the layer sustained agriculture would create...
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.
Let's be honest, they were annihilated BY the Spanish.
They were annihilated by disease that Spanish accidentally brought over from Europe. I am certain Spanish killed some, but not 19 million people from multiple centralized and established nations that were stable prior to their arrival. The reason Spaniards had such astonishing success in conquests is because natives were in the midst of extremely fatal epidemic.
You just like to jump into conclusion from pick-and-choose bits of presented information. Actually, the summary gave you the information that completely negates your statement.
Just to point out the information from TFA in TFS, the analysis comes from plugging into the ground to find out the ground sediment layers. The matters they found (e.g. charcoal, pollen, etc.) exist in the layers of the sediment. They could also calculate/estimate the time period from the layers.
If you don't know what process I'm talking about, think of plugging a long tube into the ground, and then pull the tube out which contains the ground layers inside the tube. The layers will represent what have been settled on the ground.
Spare me your bullshit. The "peaceful" natives of the Americas were constructing literal towers of skulls, adults and infants alike. The Aztec Empire had been farming its neighbors for a century, by pushing them onto marginal land, then challenging the survivors to combat. The slaves they collected from these flower wars fed their cannibalistic cult of genocide.
There is no way to negotiate with a society like that. For the sake of humanity, it must be shattered and blown to the wind. Had they not wallowed in their technological slump, they would have brought forth a reign of terror that would have make Genghis Khan look like a hippie. Thank God that Cortez was able to destroy the Aztec Empire.
I bet it was forcing everyone to use the pre-computer version of systemd that caused their downfall.
I don't think the article really gives them a free pass.
When the Spanish arrived in the 1540s, they wreaked havoc on the indigenous Quijos, killing many and conscripting others to brutal forced labor. The Quijos revolted, but by 1578 most of them had been killed or driven away, and the Spanish eventually retreated out of the valley.
"Possibly one of the worst tragedies in human histories occurred during this period," says Nick Loughlin, the lead author of the study, as millions of indigenous people across the region died after the arrival of European colonizers.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
My completely inept interpretation is that there was a devastating forest fire, precipitated by a years long drought, this created the charcoal. Now that the land is cleared by fire, plants that grow in the open field can now proliferate until the indigenous plant life grows back into a forest.
Most of the interesting-but-unpopular comments end up modded to 0, not to -1. I think the unofficial rule is that *no* comment which actually relates to the topic should be modded to -1, even if the comment is idiotic, abusive, or offensive. (Note that if a comment consists entirely of abuse, e.g. a comment consisting only of the words "You're a moron", then it doesn't contain any material relevant to the topic and qualifies for the -1 rating).
At least, that's the rule I follow when modding, and I get the sense that it's the rule most people follow. Look at the current thread: All but one of the spam comments have been modded to -1; there is not a single "unpopular-but-relevant" comment modded to -1.
I know it's de rigueur for Slashdotters to complain about Slashdot, but I think the current moderation system has worked very well for 20+ years, and I would be hesitant to suggest messing with it. (Can you name a website that has a *better* moderation system?)
The main cause behind anihilation from the Spanish was most likely biological and not militar. Spain had awesome infantry and weapons, but 200 men do not win any attriction war. On topic, sites like this should be explored. Graham Hancock is probably one of the top picks for this.
Thank you. It bothers the hell out of me that NatGeo can't keep their contractors within the very loose confines of ok English of any kind.
Don't you mean "annihilated"? It surprises me how many people use the word "decimated" without actually knowing what it means.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
"Cultivated" crops can also grow wild.
Corn and beans can not. They need human assistance.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You have way too much emotion over events that happened 400 years ago. Spain today is not Spain of then.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
(Can you name a website that has a *better* moderation system?)
Soylentnews.org has extended the moderation system in interesting ways. Mods like disagree and touche that don't affect the score, a spam mod that involves the editors (might not work here as it requires editor review), mod points for every account and the capability to mod and post in the same discussion with limitations.
It's based on the old open source slashcode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
No they don't, at least the ones that aren't posted instantly. At that most good comments don't get modded up if they're towards the bottom of the page.
I've also seen numerous users actually comment that they don't mod AC's up as they seem to believe the moderation system is to reward users rather then promote good comments.
I also don't mod a lot of the time due to wanting to have the option to post.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The conquistadors also physically killed a lot of the natives. They had better technology and horses along with a moral framework that allowed them to act like total arseholes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Yep, the inventors of the Spanish Inquisition were quite moral, along with so many Europeans of the time. Look at Columbus, chopping the arms of the natives who didn't bring him enough gold (had to pay off his backers).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Why waste energy being angry at people that died many centuries ago? Why mourn for people that died many centuries ago?
Can you change the past?
Be nice if people could learn from the past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
im huge benis - Applehu Akbar
Thanks for making my point for me.
And as much as this is commonly laid at the feet of old-worlders, let's recognize that fundamentally it was going to happen at SOME time and the fact that new worlders hadn't much gotten past the stone age was ultimately (if you believe Jared Diamond) the reason they hadn't developed stronger general immunities.
-Styopa
That's exactly why eliminating AC isn't a helpful suggestion.
Of course it is. The existence of the AC login means that even lazy people leave no trail of identity, so you have no context in which to take comments. The very laziest people would be screened out (no great loss) while the people in between the current userbase and the AC posters would get accounts. It won't affect trolls, but it will still increase utility.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
When I had 5 points for moderation, always start reading (and modding up) comments from bottom to top...