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Climate change and cultural resilience in late pre-Columbian Amazonia
- Source :
- Nature Ecology & Evolution, Nature Ecology & Evolution, Nature, 2019, 3 (7), pp.1007-1017. ⟨10.1038/s41559-019-0924-0⟩, Repositório Institucional da USP (Biblioteca Digital da Produção Intelectual), Universidade de São Paulo (USP), instacron:USP
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2019.
-
Abstract
- The long term response of ancient societies to climate change has been a matter of global debate. Until recently, the lack of integrative studies between archaeological, palaeoecological, and palaeoclimatological data had prevented an evaluation of the relationship between climate change, distinct subsistence strategies, and cultural transformations across the largest rainforest of the world, Amazonia. Here, we review the most relevant cultural changes seen in the archaeological record of six different regions within Greater Amazonia during late pre-Columbian times. We compare the chronology of those cultural transitions with high-resolution regional palaeoclimate proxies, showing that, while some societies faced major reorganisation during periods of climate change, others were unaffected and even flourished. We propose that societies with intensive, specialised land-use systems were vulnerable to transient climate change. In contrast, land-use systems that relied primarily on polyculture agroforestry, resulting in the formation of enriched forests and fertile Amazonian Dark Earths in the long term, were more resilient to climate change.
- Subjects :
- 010506 paleontology
Rainforest
[SHS.ARCHEO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Archaeology and Prehistory
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Climate Change
Amazonian
media_common.quotation_subject
Archaeological record
Climate change
F800
Dark earth
Forests
01 natural sciences
ComputingMilieux_MISCELLANEOUS
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
media_common
Ecology
Amazon rainforest
Subsistence agriculture
15. Life on land
Geography
Archaeology
13. Climate action
Psychological resilience
Brazil
GEOARQUEOLOGIA
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 2397334X
- Volume :
- 3
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Nature Ecology & Evolution
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....8b9eb56bcb46627b35ec695a13514752