PREHISTORIC Europe was covered by thick, closed-canopy forests, not open woods and grassland, according to an analysis of pollen records.
The findings undermine a controversial hypothesis that large herbivores such as the extinct aurochs limited tree growth. And they go to the heart of the question of how to conserve Europe’s “natural” ecological state. Is it right, for example, to maintain highly biodiverse pastureland that may only exist because of agriculture?
For years, the conventional view was that after the last ice age 14,000 years ago, dense forest covered lowland Europe and only began to disappear with the encroachment of…
