How big were the forests in europe?

>>2990442
When?

There are no forests on earth . jpg

>>2990450
Iron age

>>2990442
bigger than now.

tfw live in a country that is 62% forest

>>2990442
I like to imagine it being a lot like rural Canada is now.

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pretty big

>open google earth
>zoom to PNG
>observe entire nation of lush forests

this was how Europe, Africa, New World, and Asia looked like before civilisation

>>2990442
depends on the time, but forest where intensively used during the middle and early modern ages, firewood and timber, wild honey, bees wax, berries, plants and mushrooms, hunting game.
Before the pest Europe had a sizable population and as a result forests dwindled all over Europe. Like entire landscapes where turned form forest into agricultural land.

>>2991493
Actually scientiest imagine landscape more like lush parks, with open landscape and groups of trees and brush, at least that was before humans killed the mega fauna that kept the forest from growing all over.

>>2991734
scientists suck at reality.

the amazon, congo, and PNG are the last remaining areas that reveal exactly what most of earth looked liked prior to civilisation -- lush forest.

when the 1st europeans explored the western coast of africa, they were startled to find humans living in the deep, dark, lush forest. thats how humans lived in europe and asia in the paleolith

>>2991762
>How big were the forests in europe?
>talks about africa
yeah, no.

>>2991872
u stupid

Publius Tacitus describled Europe in the 1st century as "terra aut silvis horrida aut paludibus foeda" – a land, covered by horrid forests or loathsome bogs.

>>2991926
Yes, well Tacitus was not exactly alive when the mammoths and other large mammals roamed Europe in large numbers, now was he?

>>2991937
neither were u, faggot. europe was forest

>>2991954
dozens of studies tell a different story
. A growing number of studies support the hypothesis that the loss of the Pleistocene megafauna resulted in cascading effects on plant community composition, vegetation structure and ecosystem function, including increased fire activity, novel communities and shifts in biomes

>>2990442
Once upon a time a Squirrel could travel from Spain to central Russia without having to touch the ground simply by jumping from tree to tree.

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>>2990442
Before humans hunted the megafauna to extinction, Europe was a large open savanna like landscape.

>>2991762
Actually amazon we see today was shaped a lot of by humans in precolumbian times. A lot of that forest is an artificial overgrown series of gardens and orchards.

>>2993455
So it's just a coincidence that the same latitude areas on other continents are also lush jungles?

>>2993512
No let me make it simple for you:

1. Rainforest
2.Man enters rainforest
3.Man creates orchards and gardens, clears lands, makes a new soil to make it fertile for agriculture and making the rainforest suitable for it's needs.
4.Man in process of terraforming rainforest.
5.Diseases wipe out civilzations in rainforest
6.Survivors have to fight off warring with each other and aliens+slave hunters everywhere.
7.Survivors revert to small bands of hunter gatherers and tiny villages in post apocalyptic world.
8.Unkept settlements and gardens become overgrown.
9.Romantics of latter centuries come to the amazon and think its a virgin prestine wilderness.

>>2993535
You are overstating things. Yeah, there was probably more civilization in the Amazon in certain periods than most people typically imagine, but there were still huge-ass swaths of it that were more-or-less untouched by human hands (that's not to say that people literally never passed through them, but the land wasn't being cultivated). The biodiversity of the Amazon attests to that, and also the fact that, if a substantial chunk of the Amazon had ever been 'terraformed', it would have affected the rest of the planet's climate in noticeable ways - it is an absolutely enormous carbon sink, after all.

>>2992058
There was also an Ice Age going on. Try harder.

>>2991872
I think he argues that the presence of elephants, rhinos, wild cattle and giraffes has not decimated the congo into savannah so the same can be said about europe and its mammoths and its furred rhinos.

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>>2993778
Rainforest is a different habitat, there is no rhinos and cattle.
Europe on the other hand was a savanna for a long time.

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>>2993807
before humans hunted the megafauna to extinction, open landscape was the default, the so called pleistocene landscape. and it was fucking beautiful.

>>2990442
As big n dense as yo mama's bush.
>check the dub dubs.

>>2990478
Where?

>>2992058
>WE WUZ SAVANNA

>>2992058
>humans hunted the megafauna to extinction
No you retard Europe becoming a deciduous forest zone is what killed off the megafauna that needed grasslands to exist in you dumbass.

Dunno for the rest but in France, forests are bigger than ever.

Yes bigger than before. Gauls, Middle-Age, XIXth century, whenever.

>>2993807
>savanna
No its called a steppe or a temperate grassland, savannas are only at subtropical latitudes. Savannah also has beige colored grasses.

>>2995216
I'm guessing Sweden

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>Englel

I think most of the deforestation of Europe happened during the Roman Republic/Empire. This was probably especially true for Italy, Anatolia and Gaul which had large swaths of land deforested to make room for agricultural latifundia.

I don't know about Germany, it still is pretty heavily forested but most of the forested areas where probably cleared during the high and late middle ages, as there was a lot of movement of people during that time within Germany.

>>2995317

I doubt southern Greece was this heavily forested, the climate there is very dry, and rainfall is not that frequent in the summer.

>>2995259
You are pretty alone with that hypothesis. Human overkill is the standard hypothesis for the extinction of the megafauna worldwide.

>>2995402
No loss of food is why megafauna died out, notice how animals these days are much smaller because there is less food to go around.

>>2995406
source please, because that sounds like utter bullshit.

>>2995362
>was this heavily forested
>was
The pic is right now, not the past.

>>2995216
>>2995267
Slovenia. Everywhere you look you see trees. So I'm guessing that in the past this whole place was just one big rain forest