Stalagmite Reveals Carbon Footprint of Early Native Americans

[The Straight Story]

Stalagmite Reveals Carbon Footprint of Early Native Americans

ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2010) — A new study led by Ohio University scientists suggests that early Native Americans left a bigger carbon footprint than previously thought, providing more evidence that humans impacted global climate long before the modern industrial era.

Chemical analysis of a stalagmite found in the mountainous Buckeye Creek basin of West Virginia suggests that native people contributed a significant level of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere through land use practices. The early Native Americans burned trees to actively manage the forests to yield the nuts and fruit that were a large part of their diets.

"They had achieved a pretty sophisticated level of living that I don't think people have fully appreciated," said Gregory Springer, an associate professor of geological sciences at Ohio University and lead author of the study, which was published a recent issue of the journal The Holocene. "They were very advanced, and they knew how to get the most out of the forests and landscapes they lived in. This was all across North America, not just a few locations."

Initially, Springer and research collaborators from University of Texas at Arlington and University of Minnesota were studying historic drought cycles in North America using carbon isotopes in stalagmites. To their surprise, the carbon record contained evidence of a major change in the local ecosystem beginning at 100 B.C. This intrigued the team because an archeological excavation in a nearby cave had yielded evidence of a Native American community there 2,000 years ago.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100415110007.htm

[Kali]

1. It is an utter myth that this continent was in any way "pristine" and "natural"

when Europeans arrived. The ridiculous idea that "leaving something to nature" is the best or even a good management strategy is based on the failure to realize that virtually no landscape encountered by those early explorers was not altered by humans.

[protocol rv]

2. It was pristine and natural before humans arrived before Europeans did, right?

But then, what was the evolution of an oxygen atmosphere if not the greatest environmental disaster ever known - for the poor anaerobic life which died in such large numbers when poisonoous oxygen polluted their world?