However the stone age apemen who just happened to live in perfect
harmony with the environment to such an extent that they fostered the
legend of El Dorado, used a slash and burn technique that was good for
replenishing the soil.

Proof of devolution?

"The Amazonians' greatest achievement lives on. Soil scientists
analysing the terra preta have found its characteristics astonishing,
especially its ability to maintain nutrient levels over hundreds of
years.

20th century techniques of farming on cleared, torched rainforest -
so-called slash and burn agriculture - have never been sustainable.
With the vegetation burned off, the high rainfall soon leaches all the
nutrients out of the soil.

Research has shown that even chemical fertilisers cannot maintain crop
yields into a third consecutive growing season, yet terra preta remains
fertile year after year.

Orellana's accounts offer potential insight. He reported that the
indigenous people used fire to clear their fields.

Bruno Glaser, from the University of Bayreuth, has found that terra
preta is rich in charcoal, incompletely burnt wood. He believes it acts
to hold the nutrients in the soil and sustain its fertility from year
to year.

This is the great secret of the early Amazonians: how to nurture the
soil towards lasting productivity. In experimental plots, adding a
combination of charcoal and fertiliser into the rainforest soil boosted
yields by 880% compared with fertiliser alone.

Yet terra preta may have a still more remarkable ability. Almost as if
alive, it appears to reproduce. Bill Woods has met local farmers who
mine the soil commercially. They find that, as long as 20cm of terra
preta is left undisturbed, the bed will regenerate over a period of
about 20 years. He suspects that a combination of bacteria and fungi is
causing this effect."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/eldorado.shtml

Compare the techniques of such primitives to the high tech efforts of
the Indonesians in the 1990's:

"It is difficult to imagine the scope of the fire problem in Indonesia.
In late 1997, the smoke was so thick it was often difficult to see
across the street.

People suffered terrible respiratory problems.

The drivers of speed boats crossing Balikpapan Bay could not see the
opposite shore to navigate and would wander off course and sometimes
end up in the open sea.

Flights were often cancelled throughout Borneo, Malaysia and even in
Singapore and the Philippines because of the haze that stretched from
Singapore to the Moluccas."

Such is their prerogative. But they have no busines pushing unsupported
facts and maladministaration.

But that's just me. I'm watch a show on the ideas about the death of
large reptiles. (But tiring rapidly.)