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Stalagmite reveals carbon footprint of early Native Americans

Submitted by coldrum on Sunday, 02 May 2010  Page Views: 2223

Environment

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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.

Gregory Springer (Geological Sciences, Ohio University) and lead author of the study (journal, The Holocene) said, "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., [corresponding to ... evidence of a Native American community there 2,000 years ago.

[Examining] stream sediments, the team found very high levels of charcoal beginning 2,000 years ago, as well as a carbon isotope history similar to the stalagmite.

This evidence suggests that Native Americans significantly altered the local ecosystem by clearing and burning forests, probably to make fields and enhance the growth of nut trees, Springer said. This picture conflicts with the popular notion that early Native Americans had little impact on landscapes. They ... apparently cleared more land and burned more forest than previously thought. This long-ago land clearing would have impacted global climate, Springer added.

For more, see www.physorg.com

Note: 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.
Contributor Bio for coldrum: Based in Milkyway, contributing since 2002. Favourite site: Avebury.

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"Stalagmite reveals carbon footprint of early Native Americans" | Login/Create an Account | 9 News and Comments
  
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Aboriginal Hunting and Burning Increase Australia's Desert Biodiversity, Researchers by Andy B on Monday, 10 May 2010
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Related story from Australia, a rather different picture:

In Australia, Martu hunter-gatherers light fires to expose the hiding places of their prey: monitor lizards called goanna that can grow up to 6 feet long. These generations-old hunting practices, part of the Martu day-to-day routine, have reshaped Australia's Western Desert habitats, according to Stanford University anthropologists Douglas and Rebecca Bird.

"Martu" refers to a group of about 800 indigenous Australians from eight dialect-groups that inhabit the Western Desert. For 10 years, the Birds have been investigating Martu hunting strategies and their lasting environmental impacts. With support from the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford, the researchers have begun to explore what makes aboriginal hunting grounds molded by fire more biologically diverse than lands untouched by humans.

More:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100503174030.htm
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Re: Stalagmite reveals carbon footprint of early Native Americans by Anonymous on Monday, 10 May 2010
Does this mean you think they caused the medieval warm period (AD 800-1300)? Human "impact" on global conditions is unlikely to be more than a single-digit increase or decrease. Why don't you read the predictions made during the first Earth Day in 1970 and see how wacked-out they are.
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Re: Stalagmite reveals carbon footprint of early Native Americans by Anonymous on Sunday, 09 May 2010
Can't see the leap from local burns to global climate change. This is certainly evidence for localized landscape use and surface burns near the cave system and/or fires in the cave system. This no new information though. Early horticulture is starting at this time, populations are settling into villages and growing. Of course they are burning more wood. I think populations were much larger than was assumed some decades ago, and Native americans were much active in controlling their landscape than was ever thought. But where does the leap to global climate change come in?
This Iceland volcano is a good example of how man-made greenhouse gases are barely a hair on the arse of global climate influences.
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Re: Stalagmite reveals carbon footprint of early Native Americans by Anonymous on Sunday, 09 May 2010
I have just two comments on this thread.

1) I could not agree more with the carpetbagger comment. Mankind has become extremely good at industrialized destruction. Remember however whilst they are receiving the profit from it, you and I are getting the greedy benefit of it. Until you and I are willing to shut off these computers, wipe out bottoms with leaves, and go back to eating nuts again, it makes little sense to play the blame game. We are all of us to blame in this thing; the carpetbaggers just make more profit at it than we do. You may sit smugly in your living rooms and fire off salvos at them, but you and I are just as guilty at denuding forests, and decapitating mountains as they are because we continue to use their goods and services. Man up and admit it, or stop using them.

2) You must not have ever studied any history. The indigenous peoples have all virtually destroyed their own ecosystems in their own times, and each has tales to tell as they overpopulated, warred, etc. Read about Easter Island, Read about the Maya, read about the Mississippi and Floridian cultures.... shall I go on, or is it too much to ask that we look at reality - the indigenous peoples of the earth (which at one point by the way WERE ALL OF US) had their issues as well. To believe no ecosystem harm was ever done, and it was all in one big happy sustainable balance, is naïveté and denial of the highest level. Especially as the indigenous cultures became more sophisticated, not better, but more sophisticated, they would wipe out one area, and move on until it regenerated. It was not balanced or sustainable. It was slashed and burned. They just did not have the means of destroying and killing as quickly as we do today.

I'm sorry; denial is the worst thing we have in our arsenal of ignorance.
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    Re: Stalagmite reveals carbon footprint of early Native Americans by Anonymous on Tuesday, 18 May 2010
    Carpetbagger mentality accusing their customers of equal guilt by accessing any services is the same comparison as someone panning for gold in the ruinination of the local economy.

    Obviously there a huge difference in gathering a small amount of deadwood lumber to heat ones dwelling, in comparison to destroying an entire ecosystem, or maybe the above author holds some stocks and bonds in the mega utilities. In any case the article was about finding a small amount of carbon in a fossil from a cave- hardly worth putting a negative slant on Native American cultures.
    [ Reply to This ]

Re: Stalagmite reveals carbon footprint of early Native Americans by Condros on Tuesday, 04 May 2010
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I wonder if these very same "scientist/archaeologist" types would be so quick to condemn the present state of southern West Virginia's barren wasteland due to the destruction caused by "Mountain Top Removal" where entire ecosystems are looking more like barren moonscapes, with streams fouled by dumping the debris to obtain cheap coal. Our state has been ruined by "carpetbagger mentality" before, during, and after the Civil War of the 1860's. The petro-chemical and coal mining industries have caused more deaths and destruction, and still do. so anything the Native Americans wrought upon the land over 250 years ago was nothing to be concerned about, they were intelligent enough to know that the trees would grow again, and nature would return the land to it's previous state. Unlike the present "intelligentsia" that merely sees West Virginia as a financial opportunity, where the carpetbaggers do not have to live.
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    Re: Stalagmite reveals carbon footprint of early Native Americans by Runemage on Tuesday, 04 May 2010
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    Thank-you Condros, for so eloquently expressing what I was thinking when I read the article.

    This sentence especially made me wonder. "This long-ago land clearing would have impacted global climate,"
    Considering the very recent amount of lies, exaggeration and massaged statistics that have been bandied around by learned people who should know better, I'm loath to believe him either.



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    Confused. Re: Stalagmite reveals carbon footprint by bat400 on Wednesday, 05 May 2010
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    Where's the condemnation?

    "They had achieved a pretty sophisticated level of living that I don't think people have fully appreciated," ..... "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...They were better land stewards than the European colonialists who followed, .."

    I don't see any condemnation of NA land use (2000 years ago). I don't think it's condemnation to say, "Oh - here's carbon! They must have been burning more than just a campfire."

    (And, yes, I agree with you about "mountain top removal" mining.)
    [ Reply to This ]
      Confused. Re: Stalagmite reveals carbon footprint by Condros on Thursday, 06 May 2010
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      Thanks runemage and bat400, I needed to vent how totally insignificant the article seemed in comparison to the amount of destruction caused by the world's polluters today, and in collusion with the rubber-stamp agencies and entire governments worldwide that merely give them a slap on the wrist, or at the very worst-cover it up for them.
      I realise that this is a forum for archaeological interest, but I just dislike to see so much hate toward this planet we all live on being polluted by companies and individuals who couldn't care less, as long as they can make a "profit"
      While the Native Americans, who considered this land sacred, are cast into a negative light by a piece of carbon from a cave centuries past is more than trivial, it's really sad.
      [ Reply to This ]

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