News Earth

Indigenous people may have created the Amazon’s ‘dark earth’ on purpose

The fertile soil may be a massive, overlooked source of stored carbon

An Amazonian woman walks away from the camera while holding a large basket on her head.

Growing crops in the Amazon’s nutrient-poor dirt is tough. In a tradition that may be thousands of years old, indigenous Kuikuro people in Brazil overcome this issue by making their own fertile soil from ash, food scraps and controlled burns.

Morgan Schmidt

By Freda Kreier

CHICAGO — Indigenous people in the Amazon may have been deliberately creating fertile soil for farming for thousands of years.