Indigenous Peoples Were Stewards of the Western Amazon

[Judi Lynn]

Study Points to a History of Indigenous Sustainable Use of the Western Amazon Stretching Back 5,000 Years
June 7, 2021 News Release



An aerial photo of the Algodón River flowing through a forest of the Amazon Basin in the remote northeastern corner of Peru. Credit: Álvaro del Campo.

Smithsonian scientists and their collaborators have found new evidence that prehistoric Indigenous peoples did not significantly alter large swaths of forest ecosystems in the western Amazon, effectively preserving large areas of rainforests to be unmodified or used in sustainable ways that did not reshape
Now a new study led by Smithsonian researchers, published June 7 in the journal [iProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences], suggests that for at least the past 5,000 years, large areas of the rainforest in western Amazonia located away from the fertile soils near rivers were not periodically cleared with fire or subject to intensive land use by the Indigenous population before the arrival of Europeans.

The study, led by Smithsonian senior scientist emerita Dolores Piperno of the National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, is the latest entry in a nearly decade-long scientific debate over prehistoric human influence in the world’s largest rainforest.

More:
https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/indigenous-peoples-were-stewards-western-amazon

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