The Amazon rain-forest we know today is quite a recent phenomenon. New research on climate and vegetation changes from a series of cores in Ecuador provide a chronology for early agriculture and forest clearance from early Holocene times.
Excavations near two upstanding hut circles overlooking Machrie Moor revealed traces of early agriculture in the form of narrow, or 'cord' rig associated with a small cairn. Sealed beneath this were traces of earlier agricultural activity in the form of ard marks. A radiocarbon date from a basal sample of the overlying peat spanned the fifth to seventh centuries AD.
