Present-day vegetation in the Central American highlands is dominated by pine–oak forests, whose postglacial and Holocene ecological dynamics remain poorly understood. El Gigante Rockshelter (1300 masl, La Paz, Honduras), with its exceptionally long occupation history starting from the Paleoindian period, allows us to examine these dynamics using archaeological charcoal. We present a detailed wood anatomical analysis of 24 taxa from 1401 charcoal fragments and identify three zones in the anthracological diagram: (1) 10,985–10,215 cal BP – co-occurrence of dry open pine–legume (Fabaceae) woodlands with tropical riparian vegetation dominated by Cornutia ; (2) 8945–6365 cal BP – expansion of pine woodlands; and (3) 2225–1475 cal BP – maturation of the pine–oak forest, marked by the first appearance of montane understory taxa such as Symplocos and Cornus . These initial results show strong ecological coherence through time and a very slow development of Central American pine–oak forests spanning the entire Holocene. Whereas in many Neotropical regions, natural ecological dynamics are obscured by human impacts during the late-Holocene, our results indicate that changes in woodland cover around El Gigante were driven by autogenic succession. Thus, contrary to common assumptions in the literature, the expansion of pine in the Honduran highlands was not the result of millennial human impacts through fire and agriculture, as open pine woodlands preceded pine–oak forests within the natural postglacial ecological dynamics. Consistent with previous assumptions on Neotropical montane forest trajectories, oak proportions never stabilize in our record, suggesting a gradual shift towards oak-dominated forests.
Dussol et al. (Fri,) studied this question.