Was the amazon purposely terraformed?

[synergy]

Just a brief clip of a documentary but mentions Amazone terra preta soils in some places to the depth of 6 feet, that is pretty substantial over a large area. I have been spreading manure from our farm for 15 years , before that in digging I did find middens where an earlier generation had buried glass and china shards , cans and it strikes me that human and animal waste alike would be retained on the property in the soil . I do indeed think that type of ammendment to form a layer of soil to that depth would take generations as 15 years of non till here I am just seeing glimpses of soil changes such as higher populations of earthworms, more fungi and I have just started planting trees in more earnest which should add to that in the coming decades if my land is retained by my family and kept in a permaculture type production that I envision. But 6 feet of terra preta type soil is very impressive.

www.livescience.com/common/media/video/player.php?aid=24180

[canadamike]

That it was intentionnally built or simply the result of normal human activities is a dead point for the gardener, although it might fascinates the anthropologist.

I tend to side on Martin's side when he says we will not see terra preta during our life time, and I feel pretty well about it and find it normal.


I'll simply add my little piece of terra preta forming material to the land and then let it to others...

There is no doubt in my mind it comes from thousands of years of human activities. I feel pretty sure they DID build up their soil and use fire for potash, but the 6 feet deep soils were not built in 5 years for sure.

Intent, great science or not, we are looking at thousands of years of good , very very ''practical common sense'' gardening.

The great story is that common sense could stay around in the same areas for sooooo long transforming this ''human adventure'' into ''META common sense'' ;D ;D ( having a ball here) and create something that bring us back to the importance of each and every day gesture of the gardener.

Something like''6,000 years'' of intelligent gardening in the same place will create a ''new'' farming paradigm...


Martin, Zac and I will be playing chess in the heavens together long before we see it here, but we can start

[paquebot]

I told Mnjr about this and I'll tell the rest as well. For the few days that I was deeply rapt in explaining how terra preta was formed, who can say who or what was guiding my fingers. All the time, there was a toucan surrounded by tropical fruit and leaves watching those fingers. That was on my T-shirt. Below that ensemble was CHETUMAL in black letters. There is little reason for anyone to go to Chetumal. Being at the southern end of Mexico, it's definitely not an easy-access tourist site for Americans. And it's well over an hour's bus ride from any vacation town. But several friends and I did that. We took the earliest bus from Belize City and returned on the last. Other than a short timeout for dinner and shopping, the entire day was spent in the huge Mayan museum. With so few visitors, we virtually had someone by our side constantly to explain everything. What I had learned of the Mayan culture was just from reading books before but now I was right in the midst of it and even attempting to learn their system of counting.

I'm glad that we opted for the trip to Chetumal first before exploring Belize and Guatemala. We were not tourists on a canned trip but two visitors to friends in Belize City. The husband was Hispanic and the wife Mayan. Three of their daughters had graduated from a Wisconsin college any my traveling companion had boarded them in her home.

I thought of getting out a different T-shirt for this reply tonight but didn't want to get different vibes in here. It depicts one of the tallest pyramids in Belize. That was our next stop in becoming closer to the culture. I do have a picture of me standing on the top stone. From there I could look at the surrounding jungle and try to imagine the thousands of people who once lived there and wonder where they went. Just looking around at the size of the stones caused me to wonder how they did that with just manpower.

From atop the pyramid, I could also see the forest stop and give way to almost barren land and a smoky village. That was our next stop, Guatemala. Stay was short and probably better that way. I saw where perhaps 100,000 people resided at one time in and around that city. Now it was reduced to a mere tourist attraction. Our hosts didn't have much to say about it other than to infer that we had seen enough by seeing where it ended.

That was January 1996. Confirmation of my having been there is that one of the members of this forum is one of many who now grows Belizean Red beans. I came back with 12 in my pocket!

But, one may say that that was Central America and not the Amazon. It is true. I suppose that I could let my most wonderful daughter-in-law become involved but you all would have to use Babelfish or be versed in more than just English. She's Colombian! Small world, eh?

Martin