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

[lou gold]

Sorry Greg but I have to say (IMHO) it just seems too mentally speculative
and against my common sense on-the-ground knowledge of some of Amazônia. I
have seen rivers rise and fall at least 20 meters but stay within their
channels. People, in general, live on the higher ground above the flood
plain and there is plenty of it. There is simply no reason for them to do as
you postulate.

The Bolivian situation seems as a major exception to the general central
Amazônia topography. The Beni region of the mounds is a giant flood plain.
To live there you would have have to build mounds and islands and canals and
roads as is postulated in the documentary. I'm not sure why they chose to do
so. But that's another question.

I guess that on balance I would have to say that we don't have to have
scientific proof to reject every imagined possibility.

On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 1:56 PM, Greg and April <gregandapril at earthlink.net>
wrote:

>  Interspaced at the ****************** .
>
>
>
> ----- 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 13:52
> *Subject:* Re: [Terrapreta] The Reason for Pottery Shards in Terra Preta.
>
> 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.
>
> ***********************
>
>  Maybe, maybe not.
>
> There was one very distinct ( and fairly thick layer ) and perhaps 2 not
> so distinct layers and a scattering of other shards, so it's still possable.
>
> Remember WE only have video of one pit, and pic's of one or two .
>
> ***********************
>
>
> 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).
>
> ***********************
> Yes and no.    Pottery shards in water, would cause silt and debris to
> fall out of slowly moving water, thus causing them the be buried fairly
> quickly.
>
>
> Geological upheaval doesn't make sense because of the geological time
> line. This is human application.
>
> *********************
>
>  Again, yes and no.
>
>  It can, but unless it's due to a mid contental fault, or bulge due to
> geologic pressure from both sides of the contenent, is is normaly slow.
> OTOH, there are places where geologic uplifting can be measured in
> centemeters per decade.
> *********************
>
>
> 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.
>
> *********************
> Or the dump was just realy big - we still don know if there was active
> composting on the part of the acent people, or they were acting in a way
> like we do, and when a low spot is sufficently filled with garbage, they top
> it off and find another use for it.
>
> This is why I say thay to get a better understanding of what they were
> doing we will probably need a full profile ( depth and extent of TP ) of
> various sites.    If the TP slowly get's shallower towards the edges, that
> could indicate that there was a filling type operation, while if it stops
> suddenly that could indicate that there was a specific plan in mind.
>
> Does that make sense?
>
>
>


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