The impacts of climate change were already felt by the Amazon rainforest even before the arrival of Europeans after 1492. That could mean that the population of indigenous people has already declined before the Great Dying of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.
Researchers studied the fossil pollen and charcoal data from across the Amazon rainforest and said that it appears human management of the area have started in the 1200s, centuries before the sites were abandoned that allowed for reforestation.
The study in the article, "Widespread reforestation before European influence in Amazonia," was published in the journal Science and was led by Florida Tech professor Mark Bush which included an international team of researchers that investigated the pre-and post-European arrival in the Americas.
Role of Climate Change in the Decline of the Population of Indigenous People
The new research challenges the prior claims that the largest population decline in the Americas did not start until the Europeans arrived and carried new diseases to the continent, Phys.org reported.
Study co-author Frank Mayle, a professor and a tropical palaeoecology researcher at the University of Reading, said that the study showed the possibility of climate change causing the decline of the population of indigenous people several centuries before the arrival of Europeans.
They emphasized that although the introduction of diseases to the continent likely has been the reason for a major population decline after the Europeans arrived, the findings suggest the role that climate change played. They added that the impacts of climate change may provide clues to understanding how it may affect the world in this 21st century.
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Carbon Dioxide Levels in the Atmosphere in the Pre-Columbian Era
The team analyzed the fossilized pollen and charcoal which revealed that for the past 800 years, many parts of the forests have been recovering after it was deforested due to climate change. there they saw human footprints that peaked in intensity around the 1200s.
"What we saw after that, the abandonment of land and the recovery of forest, was a real surprise," Bush said in Florida Tech's news release.
The researchers are now looking to assess the potential drivers and mechanisms that might have caused the decline in the population of indigenous people in the Americas.
The study also showed that it must have implications on atmospheric and biosphere science. According to the news release, subsequent reforestation after the collapse of the population of the indigenous population in Amazonia must have sequestered significant amounts of carbon dioxide that its atmospheric level decreased in a phenomenon dubbed as the "Orbis Spike."
However, the team said that there is no evidence to back such claim, that Orbis Spike was due to the Amazonian reforestation.
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