The Miyawaki Method: Beyond Be-Leaf
By evan whalen agriculture. As settlements grew along fertile river banks and estuaries, so did upkeep. Large cities such as Cahokia Mound Complex in Illinois, Moundville in Alabama, and Pueblo Bonito in New Mexico appeared, along with more stratified societies.
Why take such a long view? Why examine the natural and cultural history of North America, pre-contact? What, you ask, could modern society possibly learn from Traditional Ecological Knowledge? Perspective. Deep wisdom. Since European contact( around 1000 AD), 96 percent of one billion acres of frontier forests have been cut down. According to the World Meteorological Organization, the last twelve years have been the hottest years in human history, resulting from record-high concentrations of warming elements trapped in the atmosphere. Most recently, The Independent found that Europe is now facing a similar condition: devastating wildfires brought on through a combination of aridity and habitat loss have burned over 505,000 hectares, or around 1,950 square miles. From a long-range planning and design perspective, we will need to adapt our existing landscape mosaic to mitigate future losses here at home. Actors at every
Before the Industrial Revolution, Montgomery County’ s agricultural reserve was a mosaic of biodiverse forests and wetlands, composed of unique plant communities. As part of the Piedmont Rolling Uplands, that territory sat on a great transitional plateau— one sandwiched between the Appalachians and the Atlantic Coastal Plain. It was home to over sixty native tree species and several hundred plant species. Throughout the greater Blue Ridge and Piedmont provinces, several thousand species expanded and contracted across the landscape. Over vast epochs of time, this plant biome shifted naturally with glacial retreat, warming periods, saltwater intrusion, fire, and other phenomena. The livelihoods of early people were top-and-toe with these plant movements in an ever-changing Piedmont landscape. One study in the Torrey Botanical Society Journal found that eventually, the Piscataway, Seneca, Massawomeck, and Susquehannock tribes would go on to implement ingenious agroforestry techniques intended to conserve big game resources, steward biodiversity, and regenerate the landscape. Eventually, there was a shift from a purely hunter-gatherer mode of production to simple
14 plenty I autumn harvest 2026
Pleistocene- 2.5 mya- 11,700 BCE
21,000 BCE
Last Glacial Maximum
14,000 BCE
Glaciers melt rapidly as Earth’ s tilt and rotation shift. Peopling of the Americas begins. First signs of indigenous land management appear.
11,700 BCE
Mid-latitude deciduous and mixed forest emerge east of Mississippi. Pleistocene megafauna go extinct.