ECHOES OF THE LAST MIND

ORIGIN: https://www.yourweather.co.uk/news/

A major modelling study suggests Europe’s “natural” landscapes were already being changed by people long before farming – through hunting big animals and using fire in ways that subtly rewired forests and open land

Modelling work has suggested Europe’s “wild” vegetation has already been shaped by human decisions – with fire and hunting nudging forests and open habitats in measurable ways.

A Prehistoric Europe likely conjures mental images of wild woods and free-roaming animals – before agriculture turned up and transformed everything, that is.

But researchers linked to Aarhus University in Denmark have used advanced computer simulations to test what actually shaped European vegetation around this time. And the results argue that story might have started much earlier than we think.

Pollen doesn’t match

The study looks at two distinct periods of time, specifically, the Last Interglacial period, which was around 125,000 to 116,000 years ago when Neanderthals lived in Europe, and the Early Holocene period – around 12,000 to 8,000 years ago. The latter is thought to be when Mesolithic hunter-gatherers from our own species were