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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

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The Amazon rainforest was extensively modified by pre-Columbian indigenous societies. Some anthropologists have even called it a "manufactured landscape". Modern LiDAR mapping has revealed thousands of large geometric ditches, reservoirs, causeways, mounds, and earthen infrastructure.[0][1] Up to 10% of soils are highly fertile man-made terra preta soils and trees like cocoa, acai, and brazilnut show an unnatural "hyperdominance" distribution due to ancient orchards. Many plants throughout show some degree of domestication[2][3]

And some have even proposed a possible human role in the transition of parts of the Amazon from grassland to rainforest about 10k years ago[4]

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/282/1812/201...

You don't achieve a population of 3M people without such extensive landscape modification.

[0] https://www.zmescience.com/science/archaeology/archaeologist...

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02773...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/humans-living-...

[3] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-archaeolo...

[4] https://www.discovermagazine.com/10-800-years-ago-early-huma...

Can you defend your statement and cite how renewable this domesticated area is? Aren’t most areas deforested for cattle farming (legendarily inefficient) and soy plantations (monoculture)?

Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2025.107810

The funny/sad thing about the Amazon soil is its incredibly poor nutritionally. Because there's so much rain, many minerals and nutrients get washed out. In fact, poor soils often result in such high biodiversity.[0] Which means when they slash and burn to grow soy, they only really have a year or 2 where the soil can support that. Afterwards all its good for is cattle (if that). But its so plentiful and demand is so high for beef and soy that we keep doing this

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWVATekt4ZA

> But its so plentiful and demand is so high for beef and soy that we keep doing this

Just to add that about three-quarters of soybeans are used as livestock feed (poultry, pigs, cattle, ...). So really, it's almost all demand for meat and dairy.

You know "wilderness" serves functions too, right?

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