Removing megafauna changed landscapes. Large herbivores can chomp their way through a lot of plants. Eliminating them increased the frequency of fires, as plant remains were left uneaten. In Australia about forty thousand years ago, the number of fires increased in many regions. A large percentage may have been started by lightning strikes. But we know that here, as in many other parts of the Paleolithic world, humans used fire systematically to fertilize the land. These technologies are known to archaeologists as fire-stick farming, after the fire sticks that indigenous Australians carried to
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