are a source of utmost importance for the history of the First Nations, a history that is heavily dependent on oral traditions and archaeological findings for the pre-contact phase. This causes many problems for historians, ethnohistorians, anthropologists. The logging industry has reduced the old forests to a minimum in most regions and thus destroyed the culturally modified trees. Another problem is that knowledge of these places is not necessarily public. That is the case with many Nuu-chah-nulth on Vancouver Island. Only that group knows the corresponding rituals, devices, stories and dances, so their consent is needed. The tiny Island of Flores is home to 71 registered culturally modified trees which are protected like archives, libraries, historic sites or memorials. After historians and the courts had recognized that the trees of Meares Island are crucial for the culture and history of the Indian Nation living there, other indigenous groups started to register CMTs in their own reserves and in their traditional territories to get the same protection for them. Historians and Indians worked closely together. Gottesfeld could detect 21 species, which played a certain role as CMTs. Of utmost importance is the Western red cedar (Thuja plicata), but the yellow cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis), spruces (Picea glauca u.a.), hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), pines (Pinus contorta, Pinus ponderosa), in addition Populus tremuloides, Populus trichocarpa and Alnus rubra are also quite frequent. The bark of hemlock and certain spruces was important for nourishment and medicine. The resin of spruces was used as a kind of glue. Scandinavia CMTs have become important for the history of Scandinavia, too. The Sami people, who also ate certain kinds of bark, were displaced northwards in the 19th century by the Swedish population, who did not eat bark. Consequently, the traces of bark peelers are interrupted from one year to the next, so that historians can exactly tell when the last Sami left the region under examination. The oldest finding ever registered is 2800 years old. Meanwhile, the methods are so much refined that even fossile trees have become an important source for human history. United States The most surprising fact was a consequence of research within the Bob Marshall Wilderness in northwestern Montana. This is a wilderness of about 3,000 km² (in addition another 3000 of neighbouring wildernesses) that was never used by non-aboriginal people. There are no houses, streets, fields or pastures. Nevertheless, the CMTs showed that between