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target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_b5dbdb6b-0d20-5e74-8662-b1ecfe60732c.png" alt="A historical map of North America and South America showing the features of the cultural landscape such as approximate limit of agriculture, major urban center, mounds, pyramids, terrace zones (mostly irrigated), irrigation, raised fields, and roads, causeways. The line for agricultural limit of North America starts at the Southwestern region, passes through Central Mexico, Central part of the continent, and ends at the Northeastern region. The line for agricultural limit of South America starts at Southwestern region, passes through central region and ends at Southeastern region. Central Mexico, Quito, Central Andes and Coast contain major urban center, mounds, pyramids, irrigation, raised fields, and roads, causeways. Cahokia contains major urban center, mounds, pyramids, and raised fields. Tenochtitlan contains raised fields and Tikul contains major urban center, terrace zones, and raised fields. Guayas and Mojos contain mounds, pyramids and raised fields. Chan Chan contains major urban center, L Titicaca contains raised fields, Cuzco contains roads, causeways, Major Island contains mounds, pyramids, Amazon contains raised fields and mounds, pyramids, and Orinoco contains mounds, pyramids and terrace zones. Mounds, pyramids are also seen in the Southeastern regions of North America."/>

      Map 1.1 Selected features of the prehistoric cultural landscape. Some cities and agricultural works had been abandoned by 1492. The approximate limit of agriculture and the distribution of terraces from Donkin, R. A. et. al. 1979, © University of Arizona Press.

      The pristine myth cannot be laid at the feet of Columbus. While he spoke of “Paradise,” his was clearly a humanized paradise. He described Hispaniola and Tortuga as densely populated and “completely cultivated like the countryside around Cordoba” (Colón 1976, 165). He also noted that “the islands are not so thickly wooded as to be impassible,” suggesting openings from clearing and burning (Columbus 1961, 5).

      It is possible to conclude not only that “the virgin forest was not encountered in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; [but that] it was invented in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries” (Pyne 1982, 46). However, “paradoxical as it may seem, there was undoubtedly much more ‘forest primeval’ in 1850 than in 1650” (Rostlund 1957, 409). Thus the “invention” of an earlier wilderness is in part understandable and is not simply a deliberate creation which ennobled the American enterprise, as suggested by Bowden (1992, 20–23). In any event, while pre-European landscape alteration has been demonstrated previously, including by several geographers, the case has mainly been made for vegetation and mainly for eastern North America. As shown here, the argument is also applicable to most of the rest of the New World, including the humid tropics, and involves much more than vegetation.

      The human impact on environment is not simply a process of increasing change or degradation in response to linear population growth and economic expansion. It is instead interrupted by periods of reversal and ecological rehabilitation as cultures collapse, populations decline, wars occur, and habitats are abandoned. Impacts may be constructive, benign, or degenerative (all subjective concepts), but change is continual at variable rates and in different directions. Even mild impacts and slow changes are cumulative, and the long-term effects can be dramatic. Is it possible that the thousands of years of human activity before Columbus created more change in the visible landscape than has occurred subsequently with European settlement and resource exploitation? The answer is probably yes for most regions for the next 250 years or so, and for some regions right up to the present time. American flora, fauna, and landscape were slowly Europeanized after 1492, but before that they had already been Indianized. “It is upon this imprint that the more familiar Euro-American landscape was grafted, rather than created anew” (Butzer 1990, 28). What does all this mean for protectionist tendencies today? Much of what is protected or proposed to be protected from human disturbance had native people present, and environmental modification occurred accordingly and in part is still detectable.

      Acknowledgments

      The field and library research that provided the background for this essay was undertaken over many years in Latin America, Berkeley, and Madison. Mentors who have been particularly influential are Carl O. Sauer, Erhard Rostlund, James J. Parsons, and Woodrow Borah, all investigators of topics discussed here.

      References

      1 Acosta, J. D. 1880 (1590). The natural and moral history of the Indies. Trans. E. Olmston. Hakluyt Society, vol. 60, 61. London.

      2 Bennett, C. F. 1968. Human influences on the zoo-geography of Panama. Ibero-Americana 51. Berkeley: University of California Press.

      3 Bowden, M. J. 1992. The invention of American tradition. Journal of Historical Geography 18: 3–26.

      4 Butzer, K. W. 1990. The Indian legacy in the American landscape. In The making of the American landscape, ed. M. P. Conzen, pp. 27–50. Boston: Unwin Hyman.

      5 ———, and Butzer, E. K. 1993. The sixteenth-century environment of the central Mexican Bajío: Archival reconstruction from Spanish land grants. In Culture, form, and place, ed. K. Mathewson, pp. 89–124. Baton Rouge: Dept. of Geology, Louisiana State University.

      6 Colón, C. 1976. Diario del descubrimiento. Vol. 1, ed. M. Alvar. Madrid: Editorial La Muralla.

      7 Columbus, C. 1961. Four voyages to the new world: Letters and selected documents. ed. R. H. Major, New York: Corinth Books.

      8 Cook, S. F. 1949. Soil erosion and population in Central Mexico. Ibero-Americana 34. Berkeley: University of California Press.

      9 ———, and Borah, W. 1971–79. Essays in population history. 3 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press.

      10 Cronon, W. 1983. Changes in the land: Indians, colonists, and the ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang.

      11 Culbert, T. P., and Rice, D. S., eds. 1990. Pre-columbian population history in the Maya lowlands. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

      12 Day, G. M. 1953. The Indian as an ecological factor in the northeastern forest. Ecology 34: 329–346.

      13 Denevan, W. M. 1961. The upland pine forests of Nicaragua. University of California Publications in Geography 12: 251–320.

      14 ———. 1966. The

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