Lake-sediment cores from Laguna Bonilla and Laguna Bonillita provide some of the first evidence of prehistoric human impacts on lowland rainforests in Costa Rica. The longer Bonillita sediment record documents permanent settlement of the lake shores by 2560 BP, about 600 years earlier than previously inferred from the archaeological record. Zea pollen and charcoal fragments in cores from both lakes indicate a subsistence strategy that included maize cultivation and some use of fire. A dramatic decline in Myrsine pollen percentages about 1300 BP suggests local eradication of this woody plant, likely as a result of land clearance and/or the use of Myrsine for construction.

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