TY - JOUR
T1 - People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years
AU - Ellis, Erle C.
AU - Gauthier, Nicolas
AU - Goldewijk, Kees Klein
AU - Bird, Rebecca Bliege
AU - Boivin, Nicole
AU - Díaz, Sandra
AU - Fuller, Dorian Q.
AU - Gill, Jacquelyn L.
AU - Kaplan, Jed O.
AU - Kingston, Naomi
AU - Locke, Harvey
AU - McMichael, Crystal N.H.
AU - Ranco, Darren
AU - Rick, Torben C.
AU - Rebecca Shaw, M.
AU - Stephens, Lucas
AU - Svenning, Jens Christian
AU - Watson, James E.M.
N1 - Funding Information:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank the editor and three anonymous reviewers for helpful advice that greatly improved this manuscript. N.B. was supported by the Max Planck Society. S.D. has been partly supported by the Newton Fund (Natural Environmental Research Council-UK and CONICET-Argentina), and the Inter-American Institute for Climate Change Research Small Grant Program 090. J.G. was supported by NSF CAREER grant EAR-1753186. J.C.S. was supported by VILLUM FONDEN Investigator grant 16549. David Tryse and Tanya Birch of Google Earth Outreach provided invaluable assistance with online mapping. The research reported in this paper contributes to the Global Land Programme (GLP.earth).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/4/27
Y1 - 2021/4/27
N2 - Archaeological and paleoecological evidence shows that by 10,000 BCE, all human societies employed varying degrees of ecologically transformative land use practices, including burning, hunting, species propagation, domestication, cultivation, and others that have left long-term legacies across the terrestrial biosphere. Yet, a lingering paradigm among natural scientists, conservationists, and policymakers is that human transformation of terrestrial nature is mostly recent and inherently destructive. Here, we use the most up-to-date, spatially explicit global reconstruction of historical human populations and land use to show that this paradigm is likely wrong. Even 12,000 y ago, nearly three quarters of Earth’s land was inhabited and therefore shaped by human societies, including more than 95% of temperate and 90% of tropical woodlands. Lands now characterized as “natural,” “intact,” and “wild” generally exhibit long histories of use, as do protected areas and Indigenous lands, and current global patterns of vertebrate species richness and key biodiversity areas are more strongly associated with past patterns of land use than with present ones in regional landscapes now characterized as natural. The current biodiversity crisis can seldom be explained by the loss of uninhabited wildlands, resulting instead from the appropriation, colonization, and intensifying use of the biodiverse cultural landscapes long shaped and sustained by prior societies. Recognizing this deep cultural connection with biodiversity will therefore be essential to resolve the crisis.
AB - Archaeological and paleoecological evidence shows that by 10,000 BCE, all human societies employed varying degrees of ecologically transformative land use practices, including burning, hunting, species propagation, domestication, cultivation, and others that have left long-term legacies across the terrestrial biosphere. Yet, a lingering paradigm among natural scientists, conservationists, and policymakers is that human transformation of terrestrial nature is mostly recent and inherently destructive. Here, we use the most up-to-date, spatially explicit global reconstruction of historical human populations and land use to show that this paradigm is likely wrong. Even 12,000 y ago, nearly three quarters of Earth’s land was inhabited and therefore shaped by human societies, including more than 95% of temperate and 90% of tropical woodlands. Lands now characterized as “natural,” “intact,” and “wild” generally exhibit long histories of use, as do protected areas and Indigenous lands, and current global patterns of vertebrate species richness and key biodiversity areas are more strongly associated with past patterns of land use than with present ones in regional landscapes now characterized as natural. The current biodiversity crisis can seldom be explained by the loss of uninhabited wildlands, resulting instead from the appropriation, colonization, and intensifying use of the biodiverse cultural landscapes long shaped and sustained by prior societies. Recognizing this deep cultural connection with biodiversity will therefore be essential to resolve the crisis.
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U2 - 10.1073/pnas.2023483118
DO - 10.1073/pnas.2023483118
M3 - Article
C2 - 33875599
AN - SCOPUS:85104927280
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 118
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 17
M1 - e2023483118
ER -