Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 118, Issue 40, Pages -Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2022206118|1of6
Keywords
pre-Colombian Amazon; paleoenvironment; hydrological change; agriculture; landscape domestication
Categories
Funding
- US-UK
- NSF [1758273]
- Arts and Humanities Research Council [AH/S00128X/1]
- Bolivia Ministry of Cultures ,Unidad Nacional de Arqueologia y Museos , and Museo Regional Arqueologico Yacuma,
- people of Santa Ana del Yacuma
- Comunidad Miraflores
- Provincia Yacuma
- Departamento del Beni, Bolivia
- Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Sci
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie [1758273] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- AHRC [AH/S00128X/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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This study demonstrates how human actions manipulated climate-driven hydrological changes on the landscape in southwestern Amazonia during the Holocene period. Human communities transformed the region to its current savanna/forest/wetland mosaic, shaping local contexts for better resource extraction management.
In landscapes that support economic and cultural activities, human communities actively manage environments and environmental change at a variety of spatial scales that complicate the effects of continental-scale climate. Here, we demonstrate how hydrological conditions were modified by humans against the backdrop of Holocene climate change in southwestern Amazonia. Paleoecological investigations (phytoliths, charcoal, pollen, diatoms) of two sediment cores extracted from within the same permanent wetland, similar to 22 km apart, show a 1,500-y difference in when the intensification of land use and management occurred, including raised field agriculture, fire regime, and agroforestry. Although rising precipitation is well known during the mid to late Holocene, human actions manipulated climate-driven hydrological changes on the landscape, revealing differing histories of human landscape domestication. Environmental factors are unable to account for local differences without the mediation of human communities that transformed the region to its current savanna/forest/wetland mosaic beginning at least 3,500 y ago. Regional environmental variables did not drive the choices made by farmers and fishers, who shaped these local contexts to better manage resource extraction. The savannas we observe today were created in the post-European period, where their fire regime and structural diversity were shaped by cattle ranching.
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