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Welcome to Scientific Americans Science Talk posted on March 20, 2015. I'm Steve Murksky. On this episode,

These forests are enriched in a useful species like tree fruits and palms, and we want to see if this is a legacy of past human modification.

That's Jose Iriarte. He's an archaeologist at the University of Exeter in the UK, and he's involved in a

project to understand human activity in and influence on the Amazon region, going back some 13,000

years. He gave a talk about the subject in February at the annual meeting of the American Association

for the Advancement of Science in San Jose, after which frequent 60-second science

podcaster, Cynthia Graber, talked to him about his work. You'll hear Iriardi mentioned

LiDAR. The word comes from the combination of light and radar and refers to a remote sensing

technology. You shine a laser onto a target and then use the light reflected back to create an image

in measure distance.

So that's LIDAR, and here are Cynthia Graber and Jose Iriarte.

Your research is looking at the issue of human influence in the Amazon.

So what's the question there that scientists are trying to understand?

The main general questions that we are trying to understand that today is a very controversial

topic in archaeology, paleocology, and conservation is, was the Amazon and pristine primeval

untouched forest that was inhabited by a small bands of hunter-gatherers or shifting horticulturalists

...