Evidence of slash-and-burn cultivation during the Mesolithic

As early as 9,500 years ago, people in Europe used slash-and-burn methods to make land usable for agriculture. This is shown by environmental data generated by scientists from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment (S-HEP) at the University of Tübingen on the basis of two drill cores from the Ammer Valley. The data were then correlated with results from the Mesolithic scattered finds from Rottenburg-Siebenlinden excavated by the Baden-Wuerttemberg Landesamt für Denkmalpflege (State Office for Monument Preservation). In their study, published in the Journal of Quaternary Science, the scientists investigate to what extent climate or anthropogenic factors played a role in the development of the vegetation landscape of the Ammer Valley over the past 11,500 years. The researchers paid particular attention to fires used by Stone Age hunters and gatherers