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posted by mrpg on Tuesday June 19 2018, @03:10AM   Printer-friendly
from the always-blame-the-last-guy dept.

Agricultural activity by humans more than 2,000 years ago had a more significant and lasting impact on the environment than previously thought. The finding -- discovered by a team of international researchers led by the University of British Columbia -- is reported in a new study published today in the journal Science Advances.

The researchers found that an increase in deforestation and agricultural activity during the Bronze Age in Ireland reached a tipping point that affected Earth's nitrogen cycle -- the process that keeps nitrogen, a critical element necessary for life, circulating between the atmosphere, land and oceans.

"Scientists are increasingly recognizing that humans have always impacted their ecosystems, but finding early evidence of significant and lasting changes is rare," said Eric Guiry, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral research fellow in UBC's department of anthropology. "By looking at when and how ancient societies began to change soil nutrients at a molecular level, we now have a deeper understanding of the turning point at which humans first began to cause environmental change."


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  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday June 19 2018, @03:41AM (7 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Tuesday June 19 2018, @03:41AM (#694823) Journal
    It just makes sense intuitively; agriculture clearly impacts the environment heavily, and in many areas (the British Isles being one) the bronze age was actually the time of heaviest agricultural impact, the time when the largest amount of land was in active cultivation. Even swamps were lived in and worked productively, with whole villages being built on stilts, including the roads. Population densities exploded with agriculture, more food meant more babies meant even more food (and shelter, and clothing, and tools etc.) needed. This changed the natural environment in millions of ways, most seemingly small, but it wouldn't be surprising if the total effect were quite large.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday June 19 2018, @04:29AM (2 children)

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday June 19 2018, @04:29AM (#694838) Journal

      Yes, it does make sense. But there are a lot of people who cling to the convenient notion that the world is so much bigger than a person that not even a large group of people can leave a lasting mark. If that thinking was correct, it wouldn't matter what everyone did to the environment, and not heeding it is one less thing to worry about in a world full of all kinds of scary things to worry about, such as enemy tribes and nations, large ferocious carnivores, poisonous snakes, locust swarms, droughts, storms, floods, volcanoes, blizzards, contagious diseases, and if all those natural things weren't enough, there's also evil spirits, angry gods, terra incognita, and, well, unknown unknowns.

      It may have been true long ago, maybe in Stone Age times, that there weren't enough people with enough power to matter. It sure isn't true today. We cannot ever again have ourselves a total war, no holds barred. Not with nuclear bombs in the arsenal.

      • (Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday June 19 2018, @04:56AM (1 child)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 19 2018, @04:56AM (#694845) Journal

        We cannot ever again have ourselves a total war, no holds barred. Not with nuclear bombs in the arsenal.

        But of course we can! Once!

        (large grin)

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 19 2018, @05:50PM

          by Freeman (732) on Tuesday June 19 2018, @05:50PM (#695160) Journal

          "Jeff Dunham: Can you stop a speeding bullet? Melvin: [pauses] Once. [audience laughs] Shut up! It hurts like hell!" https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jeff_Dunham [wikiquote.org]

          --
          Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Dr Spin on Tuesday June 19 2018, @06:53AM (3 children)

      by Dr Spin (5239) on Tuesday June 19 2018, @06:53AM (#694862)

      Population density went from 1 person per 10 square miles to 10 people per square mile in the UK as a whole in the bronze age,
      (Figures based on poor memory and extreme guesswork).

      How big is Ireland? and, given that the bronze age was the golden age in Mesopotamia, which is like 1,000 times bigger,
      and agriculture massively more organised, having started 4,000 years earlier, and China was doing well at the time too,

      I am not saying the earth's atmosphere, and indeed, Nitrogen cycle was not heavily impacted at the time, and the
      results visible in Ireland, but somehow, I think its rather unlikely that the Irish were to blame for a world wide catastrophe
      that long ago.

      --
      Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
      • (Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday June 19 2018, @01:53PM (2 children)

        by Arik (4543) on Tuesday June 19 2018, @01:53PM (#694983) Journal
        I don't think Guiry is saying that the Irish were to blame, that's just where the tests being reported were done. If it was happening in Ireland then it probably would have been happening elsewhere.

        From TFA (the fscking abstract:)

        While these results are specific to Ireland during the Bronze Age, Guiry said the findings have global implications.

        "The effect of human activities on soil nitrogen composition may be traceable wherever humans have extensively modified landscapes for agriculture," he explained. "Our findings have significant potential to serve as a model for future research."
        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday June 19 2018, @03:30PM (1 child)

          by frojack (1554) on Tuesday June 19 2018, @03:30PM (#695059) Journal

          Also not mentioned is that the "nitrogen cycle" is quite well understood these days, and farmers will plant nitrogen fixing crops on land not currently in use.

          A Google Earth tour of any/all of the British Isles shows an enormous percentage of the land set up for crops or sheep, but seldom a crop or a sheep in sight.
          Yet somehow the land stays short-grass covered, and doesn't seem to regenerate forests.

          Are these lands being rested (rotated grazing), restoring the nitrogen cycle, or do people there simply have a mowing obsession or something against planting trees?

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
          • (Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday June 19 2018, @04:39PM

            by Arik (4543) on Tuesday June 19 2018, @04:39PM (#695113) Journal
            I'd suspect a mix of several things. There are cattle and sheep of course, and crops are seasonal, depending on the time of year the photo was taken many actively worked fields could appear fallow. They might have taken that photo right after an annual mowing. At least some people do practice rotational resting of fields. And if I'm not mistaken a lot of the currently idle land *was* being farmed until very recently.

            But still, I think there's room left to consider a mowing obsession part of the puzzle. Mowing regularly places your mark on the land, letting it regrow makes it look abandoned, and that encourages crime, so there's even a criminal justice rationalization for it.
            --
            If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 19 2018, @10:16AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 19 2018, @10:16AM (#694898)

    I'd bet that beavers also have impacts on ecosystems that are identifiable 2000+ years out.

    • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 19 2018, @05:47PM

      by Freeman (732) on Tuesday June 19 2018, @05:47PM (#695158) Journal

      Assuming, they have no predators and uncontrolled growth, definitely.

      --
      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 19 2018, @01:42PM (5 children)

    The researchers found that an increase in deforestation and agricultural activity during the Bronze Age in Ireland reached a tipping point that affected Earth's nitrogen cycle...

    I dig on Ireland as much as the next guy but you could sink the whole fucking island and nothing much would change as far as the planet's concerned. It's just not big enough to have any significant impact, no matter what you do on it.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday June 19 2018, @03:39PM (2 children)

      by frojack (1554) on Tuesday June 19 2018, @03:39PM (#695069) Journal

      As Arik pointed out above, the study was done in Ireland, and pertained only to Ireland.

      "The effect of human activities on soil nitrogen composition may be traceable wherever humans have extensively modified landscapes for agriculture,"

      That sounds rather speculative if you ask me.

      Still: Why won't trees regrow in Ireland on land no longer under tillage or pasturing?
      You stop mowing a field in Wisconsin and it will be un-mowable in 3-4 years, scrub-forest in 15, and timber harvest ready in 25 years.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 19 2018, @05:07PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 19 2018, @05:07PM (#695129)

        You're labouring under a couple of blind spots.

        First, in the british isles below the tree line, trees repopulate quickly and well. If you don't do anything to prevent tree growth, your shrubs and trees will recolonise open land aggressively.

        However, that presumes ready seed resupply, or an extant seed bank in the soil.

        If you have an area where seeding trees are some way off, and where the seed bank has been depleted by repeated mowing and grazing, you will rapidly exhaust your seed bank (well, rapidly in agricultural terms) and have a field with ample grass, but limited woody plant seed.

        Doesn't mean that there's much wrong with the land.

        • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday June 20 2018, @03:08AM

          by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday June 20 2018, @03:08AM (#695431) Homepage

          Also, a great deal of the land has either thin rocky soil, or is very wet -- neither is conducive to north-temperate-zone trees, which generally need some soil depth and don't like 'wet feet'.

          --
          And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
    • (Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday June 20 2018, @01:08AM (1 child)

      by suburbanitemediocrity (6844) on Wednesday June 20 2018, @01:08AM (#695402)

      You could fit the entire human population of Earth into Ireland and still have a lower density than Mumbai, India.

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