#RMS_050

When English settlers described the dense, impenetrable woodlands of New England in the early seventeenth century, they believed they were observing a primordial wilderness that had existed unchanged for millennia. However, modern environmental historians suggest that what these settlers encountered was not an ancient, untouched ecosystem, but rather a landscape in the midst of a dramatic ecological rebound. Prior to European contact, large Indigenous populations had cleared extensive tracts of land for maize agriculture and village sites. Tragically, the introduction of Old World pathogens in the sixteenth century resulted in a catastrophic demographic collapse among Native American communities. As populations dwindled, vast areas of cultivated land were abandoned. Consequently, the forests rapidly reclaimed these open fields through the process of secondary succession. Thus, the "virgin" forest described in colonial chronicles was, in reality, a relatively young, dense overgrowth masking the footprint of a once-thriving agricultural society. What is the central argument regarding the New England forests described in the text?