Human footprints in the Amazon

Nature has a new article tracing Western perception on past population level and societal complexity in the Amazon:

Studies dating back to the 1950s suggested that small indigenous tribes merely scratched out a living in primitive villages before the arrival of Europeans. But more recently, researchers have proposed that the Amazon hosted complex societies that turned swathes of the forest into farms and orchards. Some estimates place the prehistoric population of the Amazon as high as 10 million — a huge number considering that the current population is around 30 million.

Another interesting piece on Amazonian Ecology here.