ИСТИНА

Severe human impact on soils and environments has tremendously increased over the past decades. This current development raises questions about the influence of earlier human communities on soils and environments, and the way and extent to which soils responded to these influences. On the other hand, soils also influenced early human communities. For instance, Neolithic people started settling first on the most fertile soils. As a consequence of this influence of soils on human settlement patterns, later, also cities were built preferably on fertile soils. Therefore, current urban expansion often destroys particularly fertile soils to above-average extent. Thus, both directions of influence, humans – soils and soils – humans, play a role in understanding trends and causal relationships related to soil use, soil over-use and soil loss.