More important, the very existence of so much healthy forest after twelve thousand years of use by large populations suggests that whatever Indians did before swidden must have been ecologically more sustainable. (Large cattle ranches are the major offenders in the Amazon, but small-scale farmers are responsible for up to a third of the clearing.) Fortunately, it is a relatively new practice, which means it has not yet had much time to cause damage. 1491 (2005) is a study of the Western Hemisphere before 1492, the year in which an Italian sailor employed by the Spanish empire first set foot in the. In 2006 his book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus won the National Academies Communication Award for best book of the year.

Mann (born 1955) is an American journalist and author, specializing in scientific topics. At the same time, it pours huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, a factor in global warming. National Magazine Award (finalist) Charles C. The burning sends up in smoke most of the nutrients in the vegetation-almost all of the nitrogen and half the phosphorus and potassium.

Although swidden does permit the forest to regrow, it is wildly inefficient and environmentally unsound. Slash-and-burn cultivation has become one of the driving forces behind the loss of tropical forest. The author shows how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques have come to previously unheard of conclusions about the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans: In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe. “In the Amazon, the turn to swidden was unfortunate.

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