Posted on 07/08/2025 6:44:20 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
A new study published in the journal Science suggests that humans might have played a significant part in the sudden deforestation of rainforests from Central Africa. This work contradicts the prevailing view that the expansion of farming practices was the root cause as well as the increased incidence of long, severe dry spells.
Germain Bayon, a geochemist at the French Research Institute for Exploration of the Sea in Plouzané, and his colleagues examined the weathering of sediment samples that were drawn from the mouth of the Congo River. Deforestation intensifies weathering; therefore the clay samples would provide a continuous record of the climate for the past 40,000 years.
The sediment cores revealed that 3,000 years ago, there was a complete decoupling between rainfall and the rate of weathering. Bayon says that this indicates that the climate alone could not be a factor to explain this deforestation.
The research team suggests that the Bantu-speaking people from present-day Nigeria and Cameroon, known to have emigrated across Central Africa 4,000 years ago, had an impact on the rainforest, since they cleared land for farming and iron smelting.
(Excerpt) Read more at scitechdaily.com ...
Reference: "Intensifying Weathering and Land Use in Iron Age Central Africa" by Germain Bayon, Bernard Dennielou, Joël Etoubleau, Emmanuel Ponzevera, Samuel Toucanne and Sylvain Bermell, 9 February 2012, Science.
(dead link, available in Web Archive)Evolution in Your FaceLake Victoria, Africa's largest lake, is home to more than 300 species of cichlids. These fish, which are popular in aquariums, are deep-bodied and have one nostril, rather than the usual two, on each side of the head. Seismic profiles and cores of the lake taken by a team headed by Thomas C. Johnson of the University of Minnesota, reveal that the lake dried up completely about 12,400 years ago. This means that the rate of speciation of cichlid fishes has been extremely rapid: something on average of one new species every 40 years!
by Patrick Huyghe
Omni
USAID needs to hit the 3000 year old lumberjack ancestors up for “reparations”.
Like Haiti?
Glow bull discombobulation again! 🙄
Very racist of them to blame black people for this.
Especially when there’s an agenda to foist.
I’m shocked they didn’t blame white people.
pretty convenient when scientific conclusions line up with political agendas. get this guy a grant right away!
I don't know if the population would have been large enough to have a significant impact on rain forest, but 4,000 years ago seems early for iron smelting. The Iron Age is generally accepted to have begun about 1200 BC.
Thass raciss! Africa was a paradise before the colonizers came! Wakanda forever!
Like the Great Plains during the dust bowl, due to the almost complete destruction of the deep-rooted prairie grass for farming in a region with very few trees.
Wwith no prairie grass to hold the soil in place, wind erosion devastated fields and sent everyone scurrying for California.
Instead of replanting portions of prairie, a solution was devised to plant hedgerows of Osage orange trees and windbreaks.
Great catch. 4,000 years ago is the end of the Neolithic, not even Bronze Age yet.
Look what they did to the Sahara Forest!
After humans “deforested” Africa, bureaucrats failed to organize and fine the crap out of said humans for doing something without first paying proper licenses, taxes, and permits. Otherwise government would have been able to save the planet.
“Humans Implicated in Africa’s Deforestation 3,000 Years Ago”
Let me guess... A significant lack of RAIN Implicated in Africa’s Deforestation 3,000 Years Ago.
The article states that the Bantu expansion started 4000 years ago, and their iron smelting as an activity started some unspecified period of time after that.
Also, iron smelting may have originated in Sub-Saharan Africa around 2000 BC. The earliest known cast iron is from about 800 BC (China).
The use of meteoritic iron began quite a long time ago.
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