History of Central European forests

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The history of Central European forests is characterised by thousands of years of exploitation by people. Thus a distinction needs to be made between the botanical natural history of the forest in pre- and proto-historical times—which falls mainly into the fields of natural history and Paleobotany—and the onset of the period of sedentary settlement which began at the latest in the Neolithic era in Central Europe - and thus the use of the forest by people, which is covered by the disciplines of history, archaeology, cultural studies and ecology.

The term Central Europe is generally used both geographically and ecologically to describe the area that lies roughly between the North Sea, the Alps, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea.