Amazonian

Fresh evidence has emerged that challenges the perception of the Amazon as an untouched wilderness prior to modern times. A study that has reconstructed 10,000 years of fire history using 1,361 radiocarbon dates obtained from both soil charcoal and archaeological finds from 303 sites shows that fire is predominantly a human-driven phenomenon in the Amazon. According to the authors of the study published in Frontiers of Biogeography, people did not merely inhabit the Amazon, but exerted their influence on the forest through their use of fire, equivalent to that of major climate changes that occurred during the ice ages. A Forest That Never Knew Fire In the earlier evolutionary history of these wet forests fire occurrence was extremely rare. Evidence