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Amazon ecology: Footprints in the forest

Nature volume 502, pages 160–162 (2013)Cite this article

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Researchers are tracking just how much impact ancient peoples had on the Amazon.

Crystal McMichael first led a crew into the Amazon jungle in 2007, looking for signs of ancient human disturbances. Armed with machetes, they hacked their way through thick vegetation while fending off spiders, mosquitoes and bees. They were exploring around Ecuador's Lake Ayauchi, which McMichael knew held the earliest record of maize (corn) cultivation in the Amazon from around 6,000 years ago. But the jungle hid its secrets well. “If you looked at the forest you wouldn't realize there was any ancient disturbance,” says McMichael, now a research scientist at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne. “You have to dig.”

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  • 14 October 2013

    In the original version of the graphic 'Signs of life', Ecuador and Colombia were misspelled. This has now been corrected.

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  1. Jeff Tollefson
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Tollefson, J. Amazon ecology: Footprints in the forest. Nature 502, 160–162 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/502160a

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