Comment by npongratz

4 days ago

From TFA, they're using LIDAR results to determine features suggesting indigenous farming practices. Researchers are doing the same in tropical rainforests around the world, where there's far more vegetation, finding similar evidence of intensive agriculture.

I highly doubt weeds, extensive though they might be, would wipe clean the evidence they've found in the landscape.

> I find it very hard to believe that we can find evidence of intensive cultivation after 3,600 years in such a wet area.

Perhaps I'm missing something. I'm no expert, and have merely skimmed through, but the earliest date I could find in the PDF linked from the fine article was 400 BCE [0], so around 2400 years. That's still a lot, but definitely not 3600 years.

[0] "While there is evidence of maize in the Upper Peninsula as early as 400 BCE (7), intensive cultivation, like we clearly see at Sixty Islands is typically not undertaken until roughly 1000 CE."