It seems the "ancient, pristine, and untouched" landscape of the Amazon is anything but. It's becoming increasingly clear that native Americans altered the western hemisphere nearly as much, if not equally so, as their Eurasian counterparts altered the eastern one. White explorers failed to see it because native populations were scythed away by disease long before Europeans penetrated the interior of the far more populous central and southern parts of this half of the world.

Put that in your "man as scourge of the pristine parts of the planet" pipe and smoke it!