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# Remember slash-and-burn farming?
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/podsechno-ognevoe-zemledelie-pomnite/
- Published: 2026-07-14T13:41:34.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:25:38.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Archaeology, Science, Nature

In short, it was not quite so simple.

Although in this case it is the method that is interesting rather than the result.

Polish archaeologists have established that the builders of megalithic tombs did not burn the forest down to the ground. This follows from an analysis of pollen and charcoal in lake sediments in western Poland, near a Funnel Beaker culture cemetery of the 4th millennium BC.

It has been established that Neolithic farmers cut down young trees and scrub rather than burning mature forest. This opened gaps in the canopy, and the mature trees, receiving more light, increased their pollen production over the course of several centuries. The farmers, moreover, practised a rotational system of land use, as indicated by spores and fungi associated with livestock dung.

Soil erosion in the area eventually silted up the lake and turned it into a marsh. The clearance of vegetation began more than a hundred years before the monumental tombs were built here, around 3660 BC. For us this is hardly a sensational discovery, but the conclusion is an interesting one: the construction of megalithic tombs in Central Europe did not necessarily lead to sharp environmental degradation. Naturally, this cannot be applied by default to all the megaliths of Europe. But at least one Polish lake and one cemetery disagree with the notion that Neolithic farmers were to a man burners of forests.