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Healthy soil is the hidden ingredient

(www.nature.com)
262 points gnabgib | 1 comments | 16 Apr 25 21:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.276s | source
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econ ◴[20 Apr 25 20:02 UTC] No.43746160[source]▶
Humans can figure out a lot given enough time. While all the hype for us is finance, management, machines, electronics and software etc it is not unthinkable a previous civilization went all in on soil. Terra Preta seems to be quite sophisticated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta

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culi ◴[20 Apr 25 20:38 UTC] No.43746365[source]▶
South America was pretty advanced. The oldest evidence we have of widespread metallurgy comes from the tip of South America around approximately 5000 BC. Which predates metallurgy in Eurasia by thousands of years. Copper smelting was particularly important

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy_in_pre-Columbian_Am...

On the ecological side, some anthropologists argued that humans actually played a major role in transitioning Amazonia from mostly grasslands to the rainforest it is today around 10,000 years ago.

The distribution of many plant species is inexplicable without looking at human settlement patterns. So much so that other anthropologists have called the Amazon a "manufactured landscape".

https://sci-hub.ru/https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007...

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lurk2 ◴[21 Apr 25 06:02 UTC] No.43748853[source]▶
> The oldest evidence we have of widespread metallurgy comes from the tip of South America around approximately 5000 BC. Which predates metallurgy in Eurasia by thousands of years.

There are archaeological finds in Europe dating smelting in the region back as early as 5500 BC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pločnik_(archaeological_site)

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1. culi ◴[21 Apr 25 17:00 UTC] No.43754052[source]▶
Yes but I said "widespread" metallurgy. There are evidence of metallurgy that is even older than 5000 BC in South America but it's not widespread enough for me to point it out. We even have evidence of copper processing 10,000BC in the Near East but I also didn't think that was worth pointing out

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170901113607.h...