Global Warming, 1488 BCE

Less of this equals more climate change. 

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icture this. Mankind’s reckless disregard for nature causes an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, bringing about massive changes in the Earth’s climate. No, it’s not a dire prediction of humanity’s future. Well, it is actually, but it’s also a description of what scientists believe happened in Central Africa 3,500 years ago. 

Of course, humans weren’t burning fossil fuel in 1488 BCE, but they were clearing large swatches of rainforest, which even now is the second-largest cause of greenhouse gas emissions.

So you can blame the industrial revolution for the current wave of climate change, but it was the agrarian revolution that scientists are blaming for the first.

According to an article in Scientific American, by clearing forests for farmland, and by cutting down trees to burn for heat and cooking, the Bantu people of the Central African region unwittingly turned the region from tropical forest into savannah.

Scientists have long thought that climate change was responsible for the creation of the savannahs, but this is the first study to suggest that it was the activities of prehistoric man that caused the climate change.

And of course, the clearing of tropical forests continues in many parts of the world, which scientists believe contributes heavily, along with greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning, to our current global warming trend.

[Source: Scientific American]