Yes, I saw this article too - native South Americans centuries ago in the upper Xingu region were apparently using bacterial innoculants to create good soil( or was[is] this a natural occurrence?) - maybe Jose Luiz Moreira ( on this list) has some knowledge of 'terra preta' or knows of the investigator Eduardo Neves, of the University of Sao Paulo? -----Original Message----- From: Ted Patterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 10:16 AM Subject: Native American biological farming
>Here's an interesting read with soilfoodweb implications. The March cover >story of the Atlantic Monthly is "1491" by Charles Mann. The article >examines the belief by some archaeologists, anthropologists and historians >that the pre-Columbian western hemisphere was much more heavily populated, >more developed, and more sophisticated than many of us learned in school. >Like Jared Diamond's _Guns, Germs, and Steel_, Mann's article points out >that Old World diseases actually conquered native peoples, destroying an >overwhelming majority of the population--perhaps 95%. But this article >goes further in examining the agricultural accomplishments and ecological >impact of American Indians. Whereas Diamond points to the multiplicity of >crops developed and spreading from the Tigris-Euphrates breadbasket, Mann >says, "...in agriculture they [pre-Columbian farmers] handily outstripped >the children of Sumeria." >Another controversial topic is the possible impact that large Indian >populations may have had on the Amazonian river basin -- what >"improvements" they may have made on what is now viewed as true wilderness. >In the midst of that discussion were these intriguing paragraphs: >======= >...According to William I. Woods, a soil geographer at Southern Illinois >University, ecologist's claims about terrible Amazonian land were based on >very little data. In the late 1990's Woods and others began careful >measurements in the lower Amazon. The indeed found lots of inhospitable >terrain. But they also discovered swaths of <terra preta>--rich, fertile >"black earth" that antropologists increasingly believe was created by human >beings. > ><Terra preta>, Woods guesses, covers at least 10 percent of Amazonia, an >area the size of France. It has amazing properties, he says. Tropical rain >doesn't leach nutrients from <terra preta> fields; instead the soil, so to >speak, fights back. Not far from Painted Rock Cave is a 300-acre area with >a two-foot layer of <terra preta> quarried by locals for potting soil. The >bottom third of the layer is never removed, workers there explain, because >over time it will re-create the original soil layer in its initial >thickness. The reason, scientists suspect, is that <terra preta> is >generated by a special suite of microorganisms that resists depletion. >"Apparently," Woods and the Wisconsin geographer Joseph M. McCann argued in >a presentation last summer, "at some threshold level ... dark earth attains >the capacity to perpetuate -- even regenerate itself -- thus behaving more >like a living 'super'-organism than an inert material." > >In as yet unpublished research the archaeologists Eduardo Neves, of the >University of Sao Paulo; Michael Heckenberger, of the University of >Florida; and their colleagues examined <terra preta> in the upper Xingu, a >huge southern tributary of the Amazon. Not all Xingu cultures left behind >this living earth, the discovered. But the ones that did generated it >rapidly -- suggesting to Woods that <terra preta> was created deliberately. >In a process reminiscent of dropping microorganism-rich starter in plain >dough to create sourdough bread, Amazonian peoples, he believes, inoculated >bad soil with a transforming bacterial charge. Not every group of Indians >did this, but quite a few did, and over an extended period of time. >======= > >Maybe Elaine Ingham has already done microbe counts on this <terra preta>. > >The current issue has not yet been posted at the magazine website, >http://www.theatlantic.com/ >so I'm uncertain whether the full article will be available on-line. >Enjoy, -Ted Patterson >
