Embed Notice

@mekkaokereke This is wonderful and interesting information!

"It's difficult for many US people to accept that native Americans planted entire forests."

I'm reminded that (IIRC) estimates are that 50% to 90% (!!!) of Native Americans in the Americas were killed, the vast majority by disease, within the first century or two after Europeans arrived. Hernán de Soto documented dozens or hundreds of sophisticated, populous walled cities on his journey across what is now the US south. Archaeology tells us vast civilizations existed in North, Central, and South America hundreds to thousands of years ago.

According to one author (I'm trying to remember who), the social landscape of Native Americans in North America in the 1600s-1700s was not some long-term state; it was the result of the *majority* of people dying over the previous century or so from disease. Entire civilizations had virtually disappeared, leaving whatever existed when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

Native American stories about golden periods in their collective past are probably based on reality. There seems little doubt that a huge proportion (possibly the majority) of the jungle forests of central and south America are the result of aggressive human intervention, now grown wild after a near-extinction event for the humans. The evidence certainly seems consistent with the idea that something similar was happening in big parts of North America, as well.