“The European conquest of the Americas decimated the people living there,”
Exactly what “decimation” occurred? A few thousand Indians? Did the Indians have corporate farms stretching across the entire country? Did virtually every new arrival from Europe not farm the land after clearing large tracts for said purpose?
The logic of this hypothesis is ridiculous.
According to the article:
“......By the end of the 15th century, between 40 million and 100 million people are thought to have been living in the Americas. Many of them burned trees to make room for crops, leaving behind charcoal deposits that have been found in the soils of Mexico, Nicaragua and other countries.
About 500 years ago, this charcoal accumulation plummeted as the people themselves disappeared. Smallpox, diphtheria and other diseases from Europe ultimately wiped out as much as 90 percent of the indigenous population.
Trees returned, reforesting an area at least the size of California, Nevle estimated. This new growth could have soaked up between 2 billion and 17 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air.
Ice cores from Antarctica contain air bubbles that show a drop in carbon dioxide around this time. These bubbles suggest that levels of the greenhouse gas decreased by 6 to 10 parts per million between 1525 and the early 1600s.....”
My main point is that by "cleared" the author means 'burned to the ground' as in forest and brush fires. Not only was there no fire suppression at that time, but the natives actually cleared land by fire and also used fire to push herds of buffalo off cliffs or into rivers.