El medio natural en la vertiente meridional del Tajo extremeño en la Baja Edad Media

Abstract

The growth of population and the increasing pressure on natural resources during the Late Middle Ages would demand a new attitude towards the natural environment of the land south of the Tagus River. Man becomes thus the prime conditioning factor to explain the vegetation of the landscape. His actions are not unrelated to the spreading of the holm oak dehesa and to those forms of degradation whose most outstanding manifestation can be found in the areas overgrown with rockroses. Late medieval ordinances clearly define this new reality. There was to be a strict control of the woodland; thus the supply of timber and firewood was hinged upon the preservation of those trees which provide acorns and twigs for fodder, indispensable for livestock breeding. Furthermore, bans and close seasons were introduced to protect hunting and fishing. Both the dwindling number of bears, an animal akin to the forest, and the war waged against the wolf, are a clear expression of man's impact upon the landscape which must have gready affected the herbivorous wildlife.