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(1).
For more than a quarter-century, scientists and the general public have been updating
view of the Americas before European contact. For example, they've found that the plains
faolo s
and the Eastern forests were not a wilderness but a series of gardens. The continents were not
vast uninhabited spaces but a busy network of towns and cities. Indigenous people,* we've
05 learned, altered the ecology of the Americas as surely as the European invaders did. Now,
there is a comprehensive new study bearing the names of more than 40 researchers. It suggests
that marks left by humans can even be seen across one of the most biodiverse* yet unexplored
regions in the world, the Amazon rainforest.
For more than 8,000 years, people lived in the Amazon and farmed it to make it more
o productive. (2) They favored certain trees (over others effectively creating crops that we now call
the cocoa bean and the Brazil nut, and eventually domesticated them. While many of the
communities managing these plants) died in the Amerindian genocide* 500 years ago, the
effects of their work can still be observed in today's Amazon rainforest. "People arrived in the
Amazon at least 10,000 years ago, and they started to use the species that were there. And,
cted plants with specific physical traits that are useful for
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