Peter Moore | Mar 18, 1990 | 7 min read
Author: PETER D. MOORE Department of Biology King's College London, U.K. Analyses of lake sediments in Panama have provided evidence of the earliest recorded human impact on the forest environment of Central America. In layers dating to 11,000 years ago, there is a sudden appearance of carbon, together with phytoliths of weed species, such as Heliconia. These features indicate the onset of disturbed conditions that may well have been caused by human management of the contemporaneous low biomas