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A ‘Stonehenge,’ and a mystery, rises in the Amazon
S F Gate ^ | 12/14/2016

Posted on 12/15/2016 7:13:06 AM PST by BenLurkin

CALCOENE, Brazil — As the foreman for a cattle ranch in the far reaches of the Brazilian Amazon, Lailson Camelo da Silva was razing trees to convert rain forest into pasture when he stumbled across a bizarre arrangement of towering granite blocks.

“I had no idea that I was discovering the Amazon’s own Stonehenge,” said da Silva, 65, on a scorching October day as he gazed at the archaeological site located just north of the equator. “It makes me wonder: What other secrets about our past are still hidden in Brazil’s jungles?”

After conducting radiocarbon testing and carrying out measurements during the winter solstice, scholars in the field of archaeoastronomy determined that an indigenous culture arranged the megaliths into an astronomical observatory about 1,000 years ago, or five centuries before the European conquest of the Americas began.

Their findings, along with other archaeological discoveries in Brazil in recent years — including giant land carvings, remains of fortified settlements and even complex road networks — are upending earlier views of archaeologists who argued that the Amazon had been relatively untouched by humans except for small, nomadic tribes.

Instead, some scholars now assert that the world’s largest tropical rain forest was far less “Edenic” than previously imagined, and that the Amazon supported a population of as many as 10 million people before the epidemics and large-scale slaughter put into motion by European colonizers.

In what is now the sparsely populated state of Amapa in northern Brazil, the sun stones found by da Silva near a stream called the Rego Grande are yielding clues about how indigenous peoples in the Amazon may have been far more sophisticated than assumed by archaeologists in the 20th century.

(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 12/15/2016 7:13:06 AM PST by BenLurkin
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To: BenLurkin

“1491.”


2 posted on 12/15/2016 7:18:42 AM PST by Eric in the Ozarks (Baseball players, gangsters and musicians are remembered. But journalists are forgotten.)
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To: BenLurkin

Errrr.... pics or it didn’t happen? Seems to be missing in this story.


3 posted on 12/15/2016 7:26:35 AM PST by VaeVictis (~Woe to the Conquered~)
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To: BenLurkin

Of course, there are no pictures....


4 posted on 12/15/2016 7:28:33 AM PST by Cowboy Bob
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To: BenLurkin
Actually, if this is it, it was (re)discovered in 2005 by and not nearly as impressive as the title gives it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Stonehenge
5 posted on 12/15/2016 7:33:15 AM PST by VaeVictis (~Woe to the Conquered~)
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To: BenLurkin

I recommend “the lost city of Z” by Grann. Tells the story of Percy Fawcett, and, his obsession with finding a lost city in the Xingu region of Brazil. Quite entertaining.


6 posted on 12/15/2016 7:34:00 AM PST by Conan the Librarian (The Best in Life is to crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and the Dewey Decimal System)
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To: BenLurkin

There already was a Brazilian “Stonehenge”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Stonehenge


7 posted on 12/15/2016 7:34:06 AM PST by vladimir998 (Apparently I'm still living in your head rent free. At least now it isn't empty.)
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To: VaeVictis

How about video: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/world/americas/brazil-amazon-megaliths-stonehenge.html?_r=0


8 posted on 12/15/2016 7:35:34 AM PST by vladimir998 (Apparently I'm still living in your head rent free. At least now it isn't empty.)
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To: BenLurkin

9 posted on 12/15/2016 7:36:57 AM PST by BeauBo
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To: BenLurkin

Was there something like “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” scrawled in graffiti on it somewhere?


10 posted on 12/15/2016 7:39:29 AM PST by Noumenon (Proud Irredeemable Deplorable, heavily armed Infidel. Islam delenda est.)
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To: BenLurkin

“...some scholars now assert that the world’s largest tropical rain forest was far less “Edenic” than previously imagined, and that the Amazon supported a population of as many as 10 million people before the epidemics and large-scale slaughter put into motion by European colonizers.”

They’re just now figuring out it was largely populated, yet they’ve already figured out what wiped them out...white people.


11 posted on 12/15/2016 8:07:00 AM PST by dubyagee ("I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.")
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To: dubyagee

Por supuesto


12 posted on 12/15/2016 8:07:37 AM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both)
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To: BenLurkin
I'm sooooooo impressed:


13 posted on 12/15/2016 8:14:59 AM PST by Mr Rogers (We're a nation of infants, ruled by their emotion)
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To: BenLurkin

Here is a direct link Youtube about Stonehenge of the Amazon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfln733Dctk


14 posted on 12/15/2016 8:16:26 AM PST by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously-you won't live through it anyway - "Enjoy Yourself" ala Louis Prima)
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To: BenLurkin

>>that the Amazon supported a population of as many as 10 million people before the epidemics and large-scale slaughter put into motion by European colonizers.

The idea that any genocidal actions were anything like at the same order of magnitude as epidemics is an absurdity that only someone schooled in anti-Western thought could think to imply with a statement like that.


15 posted on 12/15/2016 8:26:11 AM PST by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: dubyagee

We’re on the same page, see my previous.


16 posted on 12/15/2016 8:26:35 AM PST by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: dubyagee

Twas Aguirre, the Wrath of God, who wiped them out! Including their pigs!


17 posted on 12/15/2016 8:38:08 AM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar (Conan: To crush your enemies, and to hear the lamentations of their women)
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To: Noumenon
Was there something like “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” scrawled in graffiti on it somewhere?

No, just "AAAAARRRGGGGGggghhhh....."

18 posted on 12/15/2016 3:04:17 PM PST by Defiant (The media is the colostomy bag where truth goes after democrats digest it.)
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