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Originally Posted by Ganoderma
Someone mentioned about the aboriginals in WA had a form of terra pretta like soil.
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As far as we know, Aust. Aborigines used fire to make grassland available for kangaroos etc that they could hunt. Of couse the women could also get to collect the grass seeds (the fun job). Its probably not farming as we know it but I think there was plenty to go around. So there was no need to develop farming. Some estimate that Aborigines spent 2-3 hours aday getting food.
There is apparently a lot of charcoal in Aust. soils as a result of this practice over 40,000-60,000? years. I posted gentleman's remarks from the CSIRO who said Aust soils were poor because of this.(on this thread) In all my gardening I have never seen any evidence of it. Soils are generally low in organic matter.
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Originally Posted by Ganoderma
Just another thought....could it be possible that these people started underground fires on purpose? Perhaps pottery, among other things, is a good way of spreading heat and trying to heat the soil up as a whole to get a nice big 400 acre "eco oven"? I don’t think that anything has one use, although it may have initially been meant only for one purpose.
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Your guess is as good as anyone else as the Terra Preta Civilisation mostly died shortly after Spanish contact.
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Originally Posted by Ganoderma
Lastly about forest fires. I notice that after the past couple years forest fires in BC things grew back very quickly, despite relatively low water. Could this have something to do with it? Perhaps species that benefit from fire such as pines and morel mushrooms could lend some hints.
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From my experiments, and from the research, it seems charcoal certainly helps retain moisture (17% more according to research.). Most Australian natives cannot now re-produce without fire of some kind.
