Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 335, Issue 6073, Pages 1219-1222Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1215400
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Funding
- French National Research Agency (ANR) [2010 JCJC 609 01]
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About 3000 years ago, a major vegetation change occurred in Central Africa, when rainforest trees were abruptly replaced by savannas. Up to this point, the consensus of the scientific community has been that the forest disturbance was caused by climate change. We show here that chemical weathering in Central Africa, reconstructed from geochemical analyses of a marine sediment core, intensified abruptly at the same period, departing substantially from the long-term weathering fluctuations related to the Late Quaternary climate. Evidence that this weathering event was also contemporaneous with the migration of Bantu-speaking farmers across Central Africa suggests that human land-use intensification at that time had already made a major impact on the rainforest.
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