Fossil dung study indicates: Ancients in Negev had advanced economy"
The Negev has been inhabited for thousands of years, sometimes quite thickly. Archaeological evidence has shown there were sudden population explosions in the desert highlands. Some lasted longer than others, but all receded back into the desert sand – but just how did any of them survive in the deep desert?
Archaeologists had assumed they farmed. Now new evidence suggests they did not, instead having a much more advanced economy than had been suspected. And what is this evidence? Fossil feces - and its absence.
The conclusion is the fruit of an ongoing collaboration by archaeologists with scientists in studying the 5,000 year old site of Mashabei Sade. ...." more
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Searching for the Amazon's Hidden Civilizations7 January 2014
Crystal McMichael
Big picture. A new model of the Amazon predicts that
terra preta is more likely to be found along rivers in the eastern part of the rainforest. The letters indicate known archaeological sites.
Look around the Amazon rainforest today and it’s hard to imagine it filled with people. But in recent decades, archaeologists have started to find evidence that before Columbus’s arrival, the region was dotted with towns and perhaps even cities. The extent of human settlement in the Amazon remains hotly debated, partly because huge swaths of the 6-million-square-kilometer rainforest remain unstudied by archaeologists. Now, researchers have built a model predicting where signs of pre-Columbian agriculture are most likely to be found, a tool they hope will help guide future archaeological work in the region.
In many ways, archaeology in the Amazon is still in its infancy. Not only is it difficult to mount large-scale excavations in the middle of a tropical rainforest, but until recently, archaeologists assumed there wasn’t much to find. Amazonian soil is notoriously poor quality—all the nutrients are immediately sucked up by the rainforest’s astounding biodiversity—so for many years, scientists believed that the kind of large-scale farming needed to support cities was impossible in the region. Discoveries of
gigantic earthworks and
ancient roads, however, hint that densely populated and long-lasting population hubs once existed in the Amazon. Their agricultural secret? Pre-Columbian Amazonians enriched the soil themselves, creating what archaeologists call
terra preta...." more
Edited by Innocent, 08 January 2014 - 08:45 PM.