Archaeologica.org

Cognito wrote:BTW, Beags. Your new avatar looks just like you!!!

Minimalist wrote:What goes around, comes around.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 153658.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2008) — Fifteen hundred years ago, tribes people from the central Amazon basin mixed their soil with charcoal derived from animal bone and tree bark. Today, at the site of this charcoal deposit, scientists have found some of the richest, most fertile soil in the world. Now this ancient, remarkably simple farming technique seems far ahead of the curve, holding promise as a carbon-negative strategy to rein in world hunger as well as greenhouse gases.

Minimalist wrote:What goes around, comes around.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 153658.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2008) — Fifteen hundred years ago, tribes people from the central Amazon basin mixed their soil with charcoal derived from animal bone and tree bark. Today, at the site of this charcoal deposit, scientists have found some of the richest, most fertile soil in the world. Now this ancient, remarkably simple farming technique seems far ahead of the curve, holding promise as a carbon-negative strategy to rein in world hunger as well as greenhouse gases.

The story goes that in 1542, while exploring the Amazon Basin near Ecuador in search of El Dorado, Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana began checking the area around one of the Amazon’s largest rivers, the Rio Negro. While he never found the legendary City of Gold, upon his return to Spain, Orellana reported the jungle area held an ancient civilization — a farming people, many villages and even massive, walled cities.

Later explorers and missionaries were unable to confirm Orellana’s reports. They said the cities weren’t there and only hunter-gatherer tribes roamed the jungles. Orellana’s claims were dismissed as myth.

Scientists who later considered Orellana’s claims agreed with the negative assessments. The key problem, they said, was large societies need much food, something Amazonia’s poor soils are simply incapable of producing. And without agriculture, large groups of people are unable to escape a nomadic existence, much less build cities.

More recently, though, Orellana’s supposed myths have evolved into distinct possibilities. The key part of the puzzle has to do with terra preta.

It turns out that vast patches of the mysterious, richly fertile, man-made soil can be found throughout Amazonia. Through plot work, researchers claim terra preta can increase yields 350 percent over adjacent, nutrient-leached soils.

Many well-respected researchers now say terra preta, most of it still hidden under jungle canopy, could have sustained large, agronomic societies throughout Brazil and neighboring countries.

We’re working intensively. We don’t need to take any terra preta anywhere. What we want to do is become knowledgeable about how terra preta was created and then create it elsewhere with local resources.

“Research on this is ongoing in Columbia, in Kenya. I have research colleagues in Japan and Indonesia also working on this. At the moment, there is a lot of excitement but there’s a lot of work to do.”

Cognito wrote:BTW, Beags. Your new avatar looks just like you!!!

Somebody, the UN maybe

Just be careful that they don't chop down the rest of the world's trees in order to get the bark needed to make the charcoal. That would be the Republican solution.

Rokcet Scientist wrote:Burning the bush (rainforest) for the ash to mix with the soil to turn fertile for farming is as old as Methusalem. And still practiced today all over east Asia, Africa, and South America. When the annual burning season arrives Singapore and south Malaysia choke for weeks under a thick blanket of smoke from bush fires on Sumatra.

CShark wrote:Wow Beags, I thought you were someone else....neat avatar