Evidence of early settlement of the Azores archipelago using a high-resolution paleolimnological approach

Abstract

is generally attributed to the Portuguese during the XVth century, but recent insights have raised questions about whether the islands were discovered earlier. Paleolimnological data from São Miguel suggest that the island was settled 150 years before the official Portuguese arrival date. To pinpoint the date of first human arrival in the archipelago, we performed multiproxy characterizations (e.g. pollen, diatoms, chironomids, XRF geochemistry, faecal related organic compound) using long continuous sequences of natural lacustrine sedimentary archives to reconstruct past environmental changes for the last millennium across four of the nine islands of the Azores archipelago. We have found evidence of livestock introduction (incl. spores of coprophilous fungi, sterols), extractive forestry, and cereal cultivation around 1150 CE in two islands of the archipelago. After this first human impact period an extensive deforestation and the largescale introduction of exotic species have reshaped the lake and island ecosystems and sedimentary dynamics to present-day status. Hence, our results suggest that the human impact in the Azores archipelago started approximately three centuries prior to the official occupation of the archipelago.