Our ancestors did not originally inhabit the Rainforests. Scientific evidence and archaeology have both determined that the earliest recorded antecedents of the human race evolved on the savannahs of East Africa, where wild game was plentiful. Originally, our ancestors were probably scavengers, feeding off the carcasses of dead animals, much like vultures or jackals. Later, our ancestors developed into hunters. They were slow to settle in the Rainforest since there was less large game there, and the smaller game was more elusive and inaccessible in the densely forested jungle. Thus the human population density of the Rainforest was always very low. In the Congo River Basin of Zaire, for example, the population density of the Mbuti Pygmies is about one person for every 1.5 square miles (966 acres) and a small migrant band may range over a vast area in search of food, sometimes over 500 square miles. Since the number of these indigenous peoples in the Rainforest was always small, and since they did not over-exploit the same small plot of land continuously over the years, their impact upon the habitat was minimal. These Hunter-gatherers, did not depend on agriculture, but existed on a varied diet based on whatever they could glean from the Rainforest. The Semang tribe of Malaysia, for example, live on a diet of "nuts, berries and other fruit, young leaves and shoots, roots and tubers, honey from wild bees, fish, birds, rats, squirrels, lizards and occasionally wild pigs, tapirs and deer...at least ten different species of wild yams, and a wide variety of fruits including the durian, rambutan and tampoi". Other tribes of indigenous peoples, deep in the Rainforests of Latin America, Africa and Asia, depend on monkeys, bats and even insects as part of their food supply. Living a nomadic existence, in small family groups, these indigenous peoples have managed to adapt to life in the Rainforest after thousands of years, developing a sustainable way of life that is completely in harmony with their surroundings and the Environment.
Over time, the Hunter-gatherers of the Rainforest have, in a number of cases, also developed into "Nomadic Agriculturalists". They may clear a very small patch in the Rainforest, plant it with fruits and vegetables, and then go off to wander in the forest for several months, hunting and gathering, returning only briefly, maybe six months later, to harvest their little crop. They then abandoned the plot, which was probably no more than an acre or two, and it would completely revert to the jungle, and the habitat would soon be restored by the natural cycle of Rainforest regeneration. The "nomadic agriculturalists" would move on and repeat the cycle at some other remote location. Due to the small scale of their land-use and their migratory pattern, as well as their sensible techniques of cultivation, the Rainforest remained undamaged by their minimal impact.
This harmonious balance with nature, achieved by the Hunter-gatherers and Nomadic Agriculturalists living in the Rainforest, was not quite as in evidence in the development of more permanent cultivators, who, were to have a far more destructive effect on their Environment. These Permanent Cultivators practiced "slash and burn" or "swidden" agriculture, a form of shifting cultivation similar to the Nomadic Agriculturists, but unlike the latter, they were not dependent on hunting and gathering, and they often stayed in the same spot for three or four years at a time. They cleared much larger areas of land, since they they were now fully dependent for food on the crops they grew, and they also needed more land to raise animals on, such as pigs, goats and chickens. Trees were cut down to provide timber and thatching for huts, fences and outbuildings. Small family groups were replaced by whole tribal villages and the impact on the fragile eco-system of the Rainforest was devestating. The thin, nutrient-deficient soil of the Rainforest floor was soon washed away, the land became infertile and after their crops began to fail, the village would have to be abandoned. These peasant cultivators would then have to move further into the Rainforest and the cycle of destruction would begin again. These people had forgotten how to live in harmony with the Rainforest and the impact of their "slash and burn" existence, because of its greater scale and far more destructive nature, now poses a greater threat to the Rainforest than ever before. This crisis has been made even worse in the last few decades by the increasing migration of landless peasants and urban poor to the Rainforests, in seek of land and a new life, often with the encouragement of their Governments, who see their relocation as a solution to urban over-crowding crime, rising political tensions over land-reform and other problems. Unused to conditions in the Rainforest, and often ignorant of agriculture itself, these new "settlers" are often doomed to failure and a miserable existence of poverty, illiteracy, disease and an early death. These Slash and Burn cultivators are now the second greatest destroyers of the Rainforest, after International Logging and just ahead of Cattle-Ranching.
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