[Terrapreta] The Reason for Pottery Shards in Terra Preta.

[lou gold]

Greg,

I went back and closely watched the bbc video. The apparent layering is much
less clear than I had recalled and the site shown was from the central
Amazon, not Bolivia. That pretty much blows away my speculation that the
layers facilitated mound building.

I was intrigued by the depth of the presence of shards (many feet). This
suggests repeated applications on top of the fields, building to quite a
depth over time.  I think this was a human spreading rather than an action
of water (which would tend to separate soil and ceramic content). Geological
upheaval doesn't make sense because of the geological time line. This is
human application.

On balance, it looks a lot simpler than our speculations -- perhaps, just
put everything into the dump and then spread it around after sufficient
composting.



On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 3:14 PM, Greg and April <gregandapril at earthlink.net>
wrote:

>  I personally suspect that waste was flushed down river.    While they may
> not have been on the level of the Romans, there are indications from other
> areas ( the Andes and the savanna of Bolivia ) that ancient Americans knew
> how to work with water.
>
>
> There is this intriguing thought, it could very well be, that TP sites,
> are  area's of river bottom that have uplifted.
>
>
> I have no proof, but, I strongly suspect that water plays an important
> part as to the layer effect of the pottery shards.
>
> I wonder if anyone has paid attention as to the orientation of the pottery
> shards - concave side up or down?    Concave side up would sink faster ( and
> a curved piece would most likely sink this way ), concave side down would
> resist the flow of water better, once it is on the bottom.
>
> Greg H.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* lou gold <lou.gold at gmail.com>
> *To:* Greg and April <gregandapril at earthlink.net>
> *Cc:* Terra Preta <terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
> *Sent:* Thursday, April 03, 2008 11:31
> *Subject:* Re: [Terrapreta] The Reason for Pottery Shards in Terra Preta.
>
> my typing error greg. blew i intended to say "But I have NOT seen any
> speculation about human wastes." (in the archaeological studies) We agree.
> No data. Not even scientific speculation.
>
> fine explanation of why no disease. btw, i have not read all of 1491. only
> the exerpts I found on the Internet. somehow, i missed the explanation for
> no disease.
>
> but if there were major parasite issues, i would think that it would force
> into existence some sophisticated waste management. or was it all flushed
> down the river? do you know? is it covered on 1491?
>
>


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