Ancient History

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Drone tech uncovers 1,000-year-old native american farms in michigan (www.sciencedaily.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Research article (not open source)

Summary: In the dense forests of Michigans Upper Peninsula, archaeologists have uncovered a massive ancient agricultural system that rewrites what we thought we knew about Native American farming. Dating back as far as the 10th century, the raised ridged fields built by the ancestors of the Menominee Indian Tribe covered a vast area and were used for cultivating staple crops like corn and squash. Using drone-mounted lidar and excavations, researchers found evidence of a complex and labor-intensive system, defying the stereotype that small, egalitarian societies lacked such agricultural sophistication. Alongside farming ridges, they also discovered burial mounds, dance rings, and possible colonial-era foundations, hinting at a once-thriving cultural landscape previously obscured by forest.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Terrible headline: Maybe the LIDAR is just a bit more significant than the drone, just a bit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Agreed, the article is decent though! old reddit habits make me wary to editorialize headlines but I should probably start to do that in cases where it makes sense to

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

I was about to say that in a community like ancient history there's not much risk of people pushing disinformation by editorializing headlines, but given the subject matter of this particular post I think there may be some risks if the community was to grow in future.

I'm Australian. Conservatives here would absolutely like to minimise any suggestion that there was any agricultural activity prior to settlement.

For example, if you re-wrote this headline to something like "Lidar survey detects previously undiscovered agricultural system in Michigan", it just minimises the role of native american's pre-settlement.

I realise my example is kind of an absurdity, and in it's current form we're just not a target for this kind of manipulation, I just dislike editorialized headlines. "some communities" on lemmy are rife with this type of thing.