Foreword

The forest, a natural resource and mirror on our timeIt is generally considered that the European temperate forest gradually became established during the Holocene epoch, some 10,000 years BP. Its history, in the true sense of the word, began with the first real impacts of sedentary and agricultural man in the Neolithic era, around 7,000 years BP for the area that is now southern France. Thus the long story of man and the forest began, a story that has been marked by the contractions and expa...