Ahmed El Deeb

Man has practiced the systematic uprooting of trees thousands of years ago, and so he knew very early how the trunk of the tree from the inside, and saw these overlapping circles in the interior in the system Badi, and then realized that these circles refer to the ages of trees, he called "growth rings." But we have recently learned that greater secrets were kept hidden all the time through those circles.

Not only the ages of trees
An international research team - from the National Institute for Amazon Research in Brazil and the Max Planck Institute in Germany - published a study in the journal Plus One using Dendrochronology techniques with historical survey methods to come out with a picture of some of the effects of human societies on ancient flora For forest trees, through the investigation of growth rings of Brazilian walnut trees.

The researchers collected samples of 67 walnut trees, which they did not cut off, of course, but used non-destructive techniques to obtain the smallest possible samples of the entire tree trunk from the bark to the heart. Brazilian walnut trees are over 400 years old, so this study is the first of its kind to reveal the effects of human carnage before the European colonization of the Amazon forests.

The Amazonian farm
At the very least, before the advent of the famous shopping site, the word "Amazon" has always been called the image of pristine nature that has not been touched by human tampering, but environmental, botanical, fossil and archaeological studies have recently come to falsify this illusion and confirm the existence of numerous and solid evidence that humans have expanded the domestication And tree farming - what is known today as afforestation or forest management - since pre-Columbian times.

But the "forest management" activity (and the irony of the term "ironically") was, of course, radically different after the European colonization of the continent, with its "modern" industrial societies, which sought to transform the majestic Amazon forests into farms dominated by trees of greater economic importance. Visualization. It was then necessary to understand what happened there, and saw the trees, some of which are still standing so far, so as to realize the facts of the relationship of the jungle to humans, and to deal with the rest of them.

Says Dr. "Our findings tell us that Brazilian walnut growth rings are mirrors that reflect the evolution of human forest capture, a serious step towards understanding the complex and complex history of the Amazon forests with humans and predicting the future of that common relationship," said Victor Kaitano Andrade, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute and author of the study.

Tree growth rings speak a lot of information and scientists try to gain more vocabulary every day (Reuters)

Modern circles
The progress of the tree science has been able to tell us more about the details of the life of the trees, the seasons of their prosperity and decline, and the quality of their environments. All this and more pronounced growth rings that scientists are trying every day to acquire more vocabulary of their languages.

The growth of Brazilian walnut trees told us that there was a significant decline in their growth, as the historical survey concluded - with the increasing decline experienced by the Mora people at the beginning of the 18th century following the succession of European "conquests" on South America. But this decline has reaped a boom in growth and abundance in production as the new industrial "civilization" was established in the 19th century.

Says Dr. "What the data say so far is that the human urban extension in the Amazon basin has always been associated with a clear increase in the growth of Brazilian walnut trees, and that there have been drastic changes in plant life in the postcolonial region, when it has doubled," Andrade said in an e-mail. Sudden and urgent - the economic importance of rubber and nuts with the pressure of global market demand. "

"But our study is only the beginning of a series of other specialized studies that we are waiting to allow us to hear more of the trees' testimonies on the history of this mysterious region of the world."