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Comment by luqtas | Hacker News Reader

https://portal.amelica.org/ameli/journal/181/1813954027/html...

> The forest itself, paleo-scientists of all stripes say, is much more domesticated than previously thought.

This implies that the biodiversity is a result of (or, at the very least, supported by) the indigenous practices, which is a far cry from your claim that biodiversity suffered from those practices.

have you actually read anything? indigenous were pointed as responsibles for cultivating dominant species which had an impact and shaped the flora. the last website i published is a whole book showing how its rich biodiversity happened over multi million year processes. it also points out the impact on the "funneling" of species indigenous occupations had

i still think despite their impact, they were exemplar compared to what we had on the rest of the world (but i never studied Asia). but it's not like they were magicians that had no impact on anything and lived in complete synergy with nature by increasing biodiversity. and if you think cultivating biological dominant species across a forest has no impact i suggest you to research on the many examples of alien flora effects on various ecosystem on modernity or even try to throw some Hawaiian Baby Woodrose somewhere out their native land to check how much these species take over anothers. they probably killed and reduced species expression to settle themselves there. but cest la vie. living has an impact after all

You said certainty but now you say probably. Which is it?

I never claimed that they had no impact, but it is clear that the impact tended towards neutral to positive because: a) the forest was still there; and b) it had the higher rate of biodiversity in the world.

Indigenous burns in California are recognized as being a net positive for the old growth forests and the biodiversity within. It doesn’t take a lot to extrapolate that the same was true in the Amazon.

To state it a different way: yes, of course and without doubt their very presence affected biodiversity.

But you were talking about their practices, which tended towards custodial over exploitative. And overall these practices clearly supported biodiversity as a whole, otherwise we wouldn’t note the biodiversity of this region as anything special (see again the quote I took from your first article).

I apologize anyway for my slightly combative tone. I appreciate the resources you shared even if I haven’t had time to absorb them in full yet.

i'm just typing the way i de-romanticize them. we don't know much about their culture nor how much effected Amazon's biodiversity. what if it had twice the amount of species before their extensive practice of growing hyper dominant species? 11,000 years of human settlement on a land that evolved for millions of years in various separated isles that later got together via geologic events (thus the rich biodiversity of the region) can have a great impact

from the very 1° comment i made i typed a (probably) when i touched this subject. if Europeans took indigenous knowledge to their land, maybe Europe forests wouldn't be ripped out. maybe it wouldn't work because their ecosystem. who knows. i'm not comparing indigenous people to anyone, i'm just trying to reflect they weren't magic saints of the forest as people portray. as a vegan i also dismiss a bunch of their living practices

also California has nothing to do with the Amazon. that land catches fires naturally by lightning. various places that this phenomena happens evolved to deal with it. have you ever been to Amazon? it's so humid. regions of "terra preta" (indigenous practice of making the soil fertile, which involves burning) allowed them to grow various stuff but again, they were into hyper dominant species not expanding the forest (i guess). and as far i researched, terra preta regions are less than 2% of the whole Amazon forest

Fair points and thank you for expanding.

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