Dark ages and dark areas: global deforestation in the deep past

Deforestation is a major earth transforming process but knowledge of what occurred in the 'deep' past, before c. 1500, is obscure and characterized by 'dark ages in time and dark areas in space'. Increasingly, however, modern scholarship, in a variety of disciplines, has been able to throw light on the gloom of the past, particularly in the northern, temperate world. The European Neolithic forest dwellers constituted a more stable, sedentary society and diversified economy than thought up to now, and early human impacts on forests of North America and those of the tropical world were immense. The Classical era is characterised by vastly more detail than hitherto, particularly with regard to trade and metal smelting. A plethora of studies has revealed the motivation, extent and nature of clearing during the spectacular clearing episode of the High Middle Ages. With the exception of the iron and steel industry during the Northern Sung, clearing in 'Medieval' China remains opaque. (C) 2000 Academic Press.