ABSTRACT
After the retreat of the last glacier and significant warming of the climate c.10,000 years BP, Europe's steppe and tundra were gradually replaced by forest. By 8,000 BP most of the continent was covered by forest (Peterken, 1996; Williams, 2006). The questions how this forest landscape looked and, more specifically, how open the primeval forests of Europe were, have been discussed in recent decades by several authors. Using palaeoecological evidence, the high forest hypothesis was proposed. It states that lowland Europe was originally covered by dense, closed-canopy primeval forests and it was only the subsequent waves of large-scale human impact from c.6,000 BP onwards that opened the forest and later decreased its area (Birks, 2005; Mitchell, 2005). The high forest hypothesis was widely accepted by forest ecologists, yet it was raised for discussion after publication of Frans Vera's competing wood-pasture hypothesis (Vera, 2000). According to this hypothesis the impact of large herbivores on post-glacial woodland vegetation was strong enough to create and maintain a mosaic landscape of grasslands with shrubs and small forested patches. This idea received much attention and had a large influence on current forest management (Hampicke and Plachter, 2010; Kirby, 2004; Kirby et al., 1995; Putman, 1986; Van Wieren, 1995) and nature conservation management in general.
