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The world's major landscape alterations, as well as erosion, may have been driven by humans, according to researchers. But how did humans influence the environment before the industrial changes in the world? Scientists find out in a new study.

Indigenous people did make an impact on the Australian landscape. A minor influence was the use of fire by native Australians.

Researchers probed and counted the atoms of beryllium-10 in rock and stream sediment samples in the southeastern Tablelands in Australia. These were compared to the full amount of beryllium-10 that the researchers believed they would hit upon. A model effect of the Aboriginal burning, as well as rate of erosion, was created by the researchers.

The burning by the aboriginals was not intense or long-drawn-out enough to alter the Tablelands' erosion over thousands or millions of years. It was only in the past few thousand years that the aboriginal burning began to affect them. The burning had much less effect on the landscape than had been thought earlier, say the researchers.

The study was published in Geology.