Perhaps most startling is evidence that Indians transformed the landscape even where it was a counterfeit paradise—that is to say, where the soil was too infertile to sustain a large population. Scientists have uncovered throughout the jungle large stretches of terra preta do Indio, or “Indian black earth”: soil that has been enriched with organic human waste and charcoal from fires, so that it is made exceptionally fertile. It is not clear if Indian black earth was an accidental by-product of human inhabitation or, as some scientists think, was created by design—by a careful and systematic
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