Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

LiDAR, discovery methods, and underwater uses

• Commenters connect the Michigan field discovery to other LiDAR-based landscape work, including open-source tools.
• Question of whether LiDAR works underwater leads to clarification: bathymetric LiDAR exists but is limited by water turbidity; sonar is more typical.
• A widely publicized “Michigan underwater Stonehenge” is criticized as media hype; better sources describe it as a long stone line, likely a prehistoric caribou drive, not a Stonehenge-like monument.

Climate, crop viability, and landraces

• People speculate how maize could have been grown so far north: warmer Medieval Climate Period, microclimates, or long-term selection of locally adapted varieties.
• Others note corn is grown in the Upper Peninsula today, just not at high commercial yields.
• Discussion of “landraces” emphasizes that locally selected traditional varieties can outperform modern hybrids in specific environments and are a key genetic resource.

Soil enrichment, terra preta, and pottery shards

• The article’s description of charcoal, ceramics, and wetland soil added to fields reminds some of Amazonian terra preta and regenerative practices.
• Others caution against over-romanticizing: fertile “garbage dumps” are common archaeologically, and the role of pottery shards may be incidental rather than intentional soil engineering.
• Several comments explain that low-fired, porous pottery can gradually break down, regulate moisture, and influence soil chemistry, analogous to modern clay aggregates.
• Side discussion covers invasive earthworms in North America and their substantial impacts on forest soils.

Scale and sophistication of Indigenous agriculture

• Many stress that these were professional farmers, not “amateur scientists,” and highlight lost Indigenous knowledge of soil and polyculture.
• Debate arises over how “advanced” pre-contact American societies were relative to Europe/Asia; one side notes sophisticated but different technological trajectories, another stresses large Old World lead in metallurgy, machinery, and architecture.
• There’s pushback against older stereotypes that North American groups were purely small, nomadic “savages.”

Preservation, archaeology, and comparison to Old World sites

• Commenters are surprised such a field system survived; explanations include modern U.S. mechanized farming focusing on flat, tractor-friendly land and heavy forest cover.
• Comparisons are drawn to Roman and medieval sites in Europe: buried features can survive for millennia but are often destroyed by deep plowing or reuse of materials.
• Some note deserts bias our view of “great civilizations” because stone and writing survive better in arid regions than in wetter wood-building cultures like many in North America.

Three Sisters system and Eurasian analogues

• Several clarify that “three sisters” refers to the maize–bean–squash companion system; the article doesn’t use the phrase, leading to confusion because the original HN title did.
• Commenters describe the agronomic synergy (corn as trellis, beans supplying nitrogen, squash shading soil).
• People ask about Eurasian equivalents; suggestions include rice–fish systems and broader polyculture or crop-rotation traditions, but nothing seen as a direct analogue.

Disease, alternate histories, and colonization

• A thread explores how Eurasian diseases, not just technology, decisively shaped colonization; the massive mortality meant Indigenous societies had little chance to resist.
• Some speculate about alternate histories (e.g., earlier horse domestication in North America, different timing of disease exchange) and how that might have changed power dynamics.

Miscellaneous points

• A brief complaint appears about paywalled research produced with public funding.
• Several comments reflect on how “1,000 years” is both a short and long span—around 38 human generations—and how continuous land use over that timescale is historically significant.