KU Professor's Research Defies Traditional Thinking About Agriculture in Amazonia

Kansas City infoZine ^ | Sunday, June 04, 2006 | infoZine Staff

[SunkenCiv]

Research by a University of Kansas professor and his colleagues showing that ancient Amazonia may have supported large-scale agriculture is challenging conventional thinking and providing ideas for more efficient and environmentally friendly land use in the future... He thinks inhabitants enriched the soil by adding household waste and using a method called slash and char. Slash and char differs from the more established practice of slash and burn. Slash and burn was a high temperature fire that emitted a lot of gas and didn't add much to the soil. Slash and char was a much lower-temperature, smoldering method that added more carbon and organic material to the soil. Practitioners likely burned vegetation while it was still green, resulting in a slow burning fire, then added more wet, green vegetation to keep it that way. The result would have been soil rich with carbon that could last up to 50,000 years, Woods said. It also challenges the established belief that inhabitants of Amazonia were mostly nomadic.

[SunkenCiv]

The main obstacle has been Clovis-first-and-Only, which requires that the Americas were settled just once, fairly recently, and from north to south.

[SunkenCiv]

[chesley]

I read about this in the book 1491, recently. I forget who wrote it, but it was quite an interesting read, if a little bit PC.

[blam]

1491

[blam]

Rainforest Researchers Hit Pay Dirt (Farming 11K Years Ago - South America)

[Dustbunny]

Slash and burn was a high temperature fire that emitted a lot of gas and didn't add much to the soil. Slash and char was a much lower-temperature, smoldering method that added more carbon and organic material to the soil. Practitioners likely burned vegetation while it was still green, resulting in a slow burning fire, then added more wet, green vegetation to keep it that way.

Guess they found a book on how and why to burn and char. /sarc