Did Stone Age Humans Shape the African Landscape with Fire 85,000 Years Ago? | Hacker News Reader

Did Stone Age Humans Shape the African Landscape with Fire 85,000 Years Ago?

smithsonianmag.com

30 pointspseudolus19 comments

I was quite shocked by the landscape driving through many parts of West Africa. I always assumed places like Gabon, Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) would be 99% dense jungle given they're right on the equator.

In some places they are, but also there are immense swaths of green rolling hills that stretch to the horizon on all sides. [1]

Speaking to locals they didn't think "modern" humans had deforested like that - the evidence would have been visible, and everyone agreed it would have been impossible to deforest that much landscape without at least steam powered tools.

Maybe fire explains some of it, but I still don't really understand.

Amazingly, when I was on the other side of the continent a stone's throw from the Eastern side of the DRC, the landscape was virtually identical again. [2]

[1] Here are some shots from DRC, for example: http://theroadchoseme.com/across-the-drc-day-2

Video of each country too:

Gabon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAglvUMRj3c

Rep. Congo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOn47q06RRM

DRC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV8V3GdOcPU

[2] Uganda (almost Eastern DRC) photos: http://theroadchoseme.com/ishasha-national-park

Almost everyone underestimates the capabilities of their ancestors and work over time. As an archeologist I've seen firsthand the remnants of rivers rerouted with stone tools and vast open plains created with grazing animals and/or fire. Humans are very good at changing landscapes, regardless of our level of technology. It gets quicker and less labor intensive with modern tools, but we can do it without them nonetheless.

I certainly don't want to disagree with you, though the sheer scale of what I saw is difficult to believe.

I'm talking in the order of a million square kilometres. (DRC alone is 2.3 mil...) Do you think that could be done with stone tools and fire?

In the general case, absolutely. Thousands of humans working for thousands of years can do impressive things. I don't have any particular knowledge of the grasslands of tropical africa and a quick look at the literature shows a pretty ambiguous situation that I'm not qualified to speak to, but the concept as a whole is one that I find reasonably plausible.

Check out the forest fires in California and Oregon recently, Fire is a fast way to change a lot of land!

Modern technology allows us to seriously meddle with nature within a generation or two, whereas always prior it might've taken a few tens. Over time though, we've had thousands of generations to make our mark.

I fundamentally believe that a lot of our desertified or at least somewhat dessicated Earth - around the mediterranean, sahara and middle east at least - is significantly due to our historical industry.

Beavers can change landscapes. No tools needed.

That’s what happened to the Loess Plateau afaik. Doesn’t seem that unbelievable elsewhere, I agree.

> have been impossible to deforest that much landscape without at least steam powered tools

Or, as many people prefer to call it, goats.

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-sahara-swung-lush-conditions-y...

Every 20,000 years the desert becomes the rainforest.

Seen this theory a few times, there are some cool animations on how the Desert essentially moves up and down Africa.

Australian aboriginals, who arrived 40,000 years ago, have relatively well documented histories of wide scale fire use. However, in Australia a substantial portion of the local vegetation requires or strongly benefits from exposure to fire in order to germinate new seeds. This may not be the case with African vegetation.

I don't know. Did they? Clickbaity titles.....

Nope. Because https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...

This isn't an unreasonable proposition at all. Humans are well documented to shape the local landscape with fire; "yes" would be the default answer to the headline question.

Then why is the headline phrased as a question? If the default answer is yes and they still couldn't be assertive then I'm even more suspicious than normal! It's certainly sloppy journalism.

Referenced paper says

> analysis indicate that early anthropogenic fire relaxed seasonal constraints on ignitions, influencing vegetation composition and erosion

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/19/eabf9776

Did ancient humans like to set shit on fire too? news at 11!

My recollection is that hominids have been using fire and cooking for about 500k years. In which case if they wanted to reshape the landscape with fire it likely would have been long before 85k years ago.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com