Posted on 01/10/2010 10:10:20 AM PST by 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......
an epilogue to that rant:
there is an interesting theory that the number of infectious disease a culture has monkeys the same rate at which they were able to domesticate beasts...which could explain partially why there was less in the New world since they had little animal domestication
Instinct? . . . And, conditioned response?
They did. Tropical fevers to which Europeans had no immunity killed large numbers of the early colonists throughout the Americas. Syphilis and hepatitis are generally considered to have originated in the New World and been transported back to Europe.
This isn’t exactly a new idea. I can find references going back to at least 1815 talking about smallpox being introduced to the Indians by Columbus.
Thanks for the help webster but I'm not buying it........
There's too much historical fact proving that the Mayan cities that weren't wiped out by neighboring Mayans over the centuries died off from natural causes such as highly concentrated populations unsupported by the then existing farming abilities, thus leading to starvation.....
If the Mayans were wiped out by European diseases, why wasn't Europe before they all got their small pox and flu shots when they set sail for South America?
We spent two days in Copan and toured the Mayan ruins there. Our tour guide explained what happened to that city and why it died out. And it is as you say and what I said in a prior post, the city simply succumed to the unmedically treated diseases of that region and starvation due to poor agricultural practices needed to sustain a city of that size........
Add to that, once such a city reaches a recognizable point of no return, the people then leave and disperse to other areas of the country in order to survive.....
In our own way, we've witnessed such migration during the early years of our country......
......or even when? ......
1283 is roughly the same time the mounds in Alabama and the San Juan Basin societies fell apart.
There was something bad in the Occident for the period preceeding 1300
bttt
They also time the European colonists wrong, saying they arrived in the 15th and 16th centuries. Columbus’s voyage was 1492, the very end of the 15th century. So that should read 16th and 17th centuries.
The Mayan culture was pretty much gone by the time the Conquistadors landed. In the Yucatan, the Toltecs had moved into the Mayan sites like Chichen Itza. The Aztecs, on the other hand, were decimated by smallpox, which the original Spanish histories confirm. Aztec tribute records indicate that they had 30 million people in their empire in 1518. A hundred years later, the Spaniards could only document 1.6 million.
Smallpox also spread to the Incas before the Spaniards got there. The Inca emperor died of it, triggering a war of succession. Pizarro, who had visited Peru just a few years earlier, was struck by the empty cities when he came back intent on conquest. From his translators he learned of the disease and war that had killed most of the population.
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Thanks JoeProBono. |
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