made sense. Humboldt had written that the ‘restless activity of large communities of men gradually despoil the face of the earth’ – exactly what Marsh was seeing now. Humboldt had said that the natural world was linked to the ‘political and moral history of humanity’, from imperial ambitions that exploited colonial crops to the migration of plants along the paths of ancient civilizations. He had described how sugar plantations in Cuba and the smelting of silver in Mexico had caused dramatic deforestation. Greed shaped societies and nature. Man left trails of destruction, Humboldt had said,
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