Image Credit : Professor José Iriarte
Now if someone today were to introduce some new plant life in the Amazon that would be considered criminal.
I first heard of this Amazonian dark earth on a Josh Gates Destination Unknown episode. At the time they were claiming how it was made was unknown.
I remembered how we would clear cut some space just inside a forest (about 30 yards by 15 yards), take the firewood out then burn the laps and leaf cover in a small controlled burn.
That was our plant bed for the next years tobacco crop.
That patch would stay fertile for years if we took care of it.
I figured the dark earth had to be something along the same line.
Only citified academics are mystified by what old school farmers and laborers knew from experience.
Oh No!!! The Amazon is supposed to be virgin land, untouched by human hands and feet for ever and ever in the past. How dare that it have people who had desecrated its sacred rain forests with hunting, gathering and (mega-horrid) farming.
