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"Lost" Amazon Complex Found; Shapes Seen by Satellite
nationalgeographic ^ | January 4, 2010 | John Roach

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......



TOPICS: History; Outdoors; Science; Society
KEYWORDS: amazon; ggg; godsgravesglyphs; jpb
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To: Nepeta

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


21 posted on 01/10/2010 10:49:32 AM PST by wardaddy (Ole Miss beat Oklahoma State....and Bama is #1.....it's good to be from Dixie...cold though)
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To: DannyTN
"How on earth do they jump to the conclusion that it was disease brought by European colonists?"

Instinct? . . . And, conditioned response?

22 posted on 01/10/2010 10:52:54 AM PST by YHAOS
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To: wardaddy
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.

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.

23 posted on 01/10/2010 11:04:45 AM PST by Bubba Ho-Tep ("More weight!"--Giles Corey)
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To: Bubba Ho-Tep

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:N59qxGSfGM0J:www.eoearth.org/article/Columbian_exchange:_plants,_animals,_and_disease_between_the_Old_and_New_World+new+world+diseases&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us


24 posted on 01/10/2010 11:15:59 AM PST by wardaddy (Ole Miss beat Oklahoma State....and Bama is #1.....it's good to be from Dixie...cold though)
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To: YHAOS

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.


25 posted on 01/10/2010 11:18:16 AM PST by Bubba Ho-Tep ("More weight!"--Giles Corey)
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To: fish hawk
Go to your dictionary and look up “immune”.

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?

26 posted on 01/10/2010 12:17:07 PM PST by Hot Tabasco (I want a hoochie-mama for Christmas, only a hoochie-mama will do............)
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To: wardaddy
That's a very good explanation and one I totally support. Back in '03 I had the pleasure of once again visiting Honduras (4th time I think) with my sister and brother-in-law who is from Honduras.

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......

27 posted on 01/10/2010 12:43:36 PM PST by Hot Tabasco (I want a hoochie-mama for Christmas, only a hoochie-mama will do............)
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To: DannyTN

......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


28 posted on 01/10/2010 1:03:39 PM PST by bert (K.E. N.P. +12 . What ever I do is what shall bean the production line than to operate the equipm)
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To: bert

bttt


29 posted on 01/10/2010 1:04:32 PM PST by ConservativeMan55
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To: bert

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.


30 posted on 01/10/2010 1:14:14 PM PST by DannyTN
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To: 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?

How else does one explain goods of pre-Columbian old world (and the old world encompasses many more peoples than whites)goods deep inside North America? A handful of contacts makes sense.

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?

This isn't about blaming whites. It's about diseases. When massive numbers of people came west over the Atlantic, most were European whites who did not come from the tropics, so they would carry the diseases borne in those populations. There are carved heads in meso-America with distinctly African features, which suggests strongly of an African presence. They also would have brought their diseases, as did the slaves imported much later.

The Indians did pass diseases, just not as many because they did not have as many to pass. Syphilis is one.

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 numbers are debated. "Lack of progress"--well, they were pretty darn good plant breeders. It is hard to imagine the world diet without corn, tomatoes, and potatoes. The Spanish found cities larger and grander than what they left at home.

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.

Most of my ancestors were barbarian types tamed by Romans, but that doesn't stop me from admiring Roman culture's vast civilizing influences. I know my DNA was running around in skins in the woods while the Greeks evolved the roots of the west, the Jews wrote their holy books, and the Egyptians did their marvelous building. But I am the inheritor of all of those cultures, including those of the barbarians, and as a Westerner, I am proud of all of them.
31 posted on 01/10/2010 3:08:01 PM PST by Nepeta
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To: Hot Tabasco
Someone did some interesting analysis of how much wood was needed to burn the limestone to make the mortar to build the Mayan temples. In a world with no wheel, and no other fuel, you reach a point where you simply deforest an area within your transport area.

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.

32 posted on 01/10/2010 5:28:40 PM PST by Bubba Ho-Tep ("More weight!"--Giles Corey)
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To: JoeProBono

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33 posted on 01/10/2010 6:43:43 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Happy New Year! Freedom is Priceless.)
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