"Lost" Amazon Complex Found; Shapes Seen by Satellite

nationalgeographic ^ | January 4, 2010 | John Roach

[JoeProBono]

Satellite images of the upper Amazon Basin taken since 1999 have revealed more than 200 geometric earthworks spanning a distance greater than 155 miles (250 kilometers).

Now researchers estimate that nearly ten times as many such structures—of unknown purpose—may exist undetected under the Amazon's forest cover.

At least one of the sites has been dated to around A.D. 1283, although others may date as far back as A.D. 200 to 300, said study co-author Denise Schaan, an anthropologist at the Federal University of Pará in Belém, Brazil.

The discovery adds to evidence that the hinterlands of the Amazon once teemed with complex societies, which were largely wiped out by diseases brought to South America by European colonists in the 15th and 16th centuries, Schaan said.

Since these vanished societies had gone unrecorded, previous research had suggested that soils in the upper Amazon were too poor to support the extensive agriculture needed for such large, permanent settlements.

"We found that this picture is wrong," Schaan said. "And there is a lot more to discover in these places."

Wide-reaching Culture

The newfound shapes are created by a series of trenches about 36 feet (11 meters) wide and several feet deep, with adjacent banks up to 3 feet (1 meter) tall. Straight roads connect many of the earthworks.

Preliminary excavations at one of the sites in 2008 revealed that some of the earthworks were surrounded by low mounds containing domestic ceramics, charcoal, grinding-stone fragments, and other evidence of habitation.

But who built the structures and what functions they served remains a mystery. Ideas range from defensive buildings to ceremonial centers and homes, the study authors say......

[JoeProBono]

The Amazon Basin

[edcoil]

Great societies before their “green movement”.

[B.O. Plenty]

The deeper they dig, the more they are going to find.

[BradyLS]

Wonder if there is any relationship to the figures on the Nazca plains.

[Hegemony Cricket]

ping

[Hot Tabasco]

teemed with complex societies, which were largely wiped out by diseases brought to South America by European colonists in the 15th and 16th centuries

There's the evil white man again........

I'm more inclined to believe that most of the societies ultimately starved to death.......

If the Europeans are to blame for the diseases, why didn't they themselves die on the boats on the way over?

[Ingtar]

I would think more of them disappeared long before the arrival of the Europeans - at the hands of the Incas or Aztecs.

[DannyTN]

"The discovery adds to evidence that the hinterlands of the Amazon once teemed with complex societies, which were largely wiped out by diseases brought to South America by European colonists in the 15th and 16th centuries, Schaan said."

How on earth do they jump to the conclusion that it was disease brought by European colonists? There is no indication they know who built them, why, or even when? Much less why those structures were abandoned.

[DannyTN]

"The discovery adds to evidence that the hinterlands of the Amazon once teemed with complex societies, which were largely wiped out by diseases brought to South America by European colonists in the 15th and 16th centuries, Schaan said."

How on earth do they jump to the conclusion that it was disease brought by European colonists? There is no indication they know who built them, why, or even when? Much less why those structures were abandoned.

[SJSAMPLE]

A satellite finds hidden ruins in the southern hemisphere?

This sounds eerily familiar ...

[Roscoe Karns]

[wardaddy]

don’t forget...Amerindian culture was of course superior too....earth mounds and all being the haute culture of the time..

[Nepeta]

If the Europeans are to blame for the diseases, why didn't they themselves die on the boats on the way over?

By now, it's accepted that there were limited contacts between the "old" and "new" world well before Columbus, and even before the Norse, but in terms of diseases, people essentially lived in different universes before Europeans arrived and stayed.

I've read that many diseases jump from animal to human hosts. The old world domesticated far more species than the new [we received the cold virus from the horse] and upon contact of the two worlds, there were a lot more old world diseases to afflict new world peoples than the reverse. There is nothing sinister or conspiratorial about this--it simply is.

The Europeans sailing west carried diseases that had been in their populations for many, many generations, and they had resistance to them. New worlders had NO resistance to these diseases, and so they died by the millions.

[wardaddy]

NatGeo is a cesspool of anti-western reconstructionism and all forms of progressivism

junk

in no way resembles it’s glory of long ago when brave western White men who had actually done something dangerous and explored ran it..

now like most such places it’s run by meterosexuals, womyn with hiking boots and hair on their legs and homosexuals

[edcoil]

Then the Incas or Aztecs would still be there. More likely
their societies moved due to something then taken over.

[squarebarb]

Exactly. i was wondering that myself. Large earth-sculptures, somewhat similar.

And also the great mounds in the midwest, animal figures, I can’t remember exactly which animals.

A good book on the area is ‘The Lost City Of Z’.

[mamelukesabre]

I think they now claim that syphilis was given to europeans by native americans.

[fish hawk]

Go to your dictionary and look up “immune”.

[wardaddy]

it's accepted that there were limited contacts between the "old" and "new" world well before Columbus, and even before the Norse

really..accepted by impartial scientists?

The Europeans sailing west carried diseases that had been in their populations for many, many generations, and they had resistance to them

If it's that simple to blame whites (as usual) then why didn't the Indians here have their own diseases to kill the whites in kind. Tropical areas are today the world's cesspools of contagions, so why not then? Granted that whites like everyone else had dealt with plagues and whatnot but why did Indians here not have their own diseases to which Whites were vulnerable like they do today....Ebola, AIDs etc today are endemic to tropical Africa.

What there is debate about is just how many millions of Indians there were. The truth is that due to their dispersal and lack of progress on relative civilization scales they simply could not support the populations Europe and elsewhere did. Their isolation hampered them same as it did Negroid tribes in Africa and Aborigines in Australia and elsewhere in the Pacific.

Nearly all such science today exists simply to find any fantasy route to blame whites and denigrate my ancestor's achievments...I fart in it's general direction.

PS...20 year vet of third world living...had the typhoid fever to prove it..Haiti

[JoeProBono]