Lost Cities of the Amazon Discovered From the Air

smithsonianmag.com ^ | May 25, 2022 | Brian Handwerk

[BenLurkin]

Perched in a helicopter some 650 feet up, scientists used light-based remote sensing technology (lidar) to digitally deforest the canopy and identify the ancient ruins of a vast urban settlement around Llanos de Mojos in the Bolivian Amazon that was abandoned some 600 years ago. The new images reveal, in detail, a stronghold of the socially complex Casarabe Culture (500-1400 C.E.) with urban centers boasting monumental platform and pyramid architecture. Raised causeways connected a constellation of suburban-like settlements, which stretched for miles across a landscape that was shaped by a massive water control and distribution system with reservoirs and canals. The site, described this week in Nature, is the most striking discovery to suggest that the Amazon’s rainforest ‘wilderness’ was actually heavily populated, and in places quite urbanized, for many centuries before recorded history of the region began.

Among the 26 sites were two large urban centers, Landivar and Cotoca. They were already known to exist, but the new maps detailed their archaeological complexity and vast size (1.2 and .5 sq miles respectively). Each large center is surrounded by successive rings of moat and rampart fortifications. The sites boast artificial terraces, huge earthen-platform buildings and conical pyramids over 70 feet tall. All these impressive civic and ceremonial buildings are also oriented to the north-northwest... The aerial view with trees stripped away revealed two centers, each anchored by a large network of regional settlements connected by numerous causeways. Those passageways radiate out from the centers like spokes on a wheel, and stretch for several miles. These connect sub-urban settlements, ranging from small settlements closer to the centers to more distant and even smaller sites that may have been used as temporary campsites. Similarly, canals also stretch from the main centers and conn

[BenLurkin]

gnip

[Mr. K]

They should also look at south Africa.

There are very visible ‘grids’ of what must have once been a HUGE system of waterways.

Also, the entire north of Africa looks like a gigantic wave swept over it.

Right over the ‘Eye of the Sahara’ which could be man-made and the real original Atlantis. A wave overtaking it would certainly explain a ‘single day and night of misfortune’.

Clearly SOMETHING huge and disastrous happened to Africa.

[z3n]

“Civilization” is anything but. Doesn’t matter which continent. City states had to fortify, because other city states would attack.

[DannyTN]

[marktwain]

Though it faced an unknown end, the culture that thrived here adds to the growing evidence that the Amazon isn’t actually one of the world’s great untouched wilderness areas—and wasn’t even an unbroken forest until relatively modern times.

So, the Amazon rain forest is not really the "lungs" of the planet, after all.

[Cowgirl of Justice]

Wow!!! Where can I read about this?

[Conan the Librarian]

This played an important part of the “Lost City of Z” theory of Percy Fawcett.

For a GREAT read, read “The Lost City of Z” by David Grann.

Also, read about Orellana, the Spanish Explorer who’s men built a boat and floated down the Amazon to the sea, and, then around to the Caribbean in Buddy Levy’s River of Darkness.

[Conan the Librarian]

There is a large part of this story in “The Lost City of Z”.

Michael Heckenberger (mentioned in the article) was interviewed in that book and he showed David Grann some of these settlements.

[Pollard]

[Flick Lives]

Also, the entire north of Africa looks like a gigantic wave swept over it.

—

I’ve read that some 8,000 years ago, what is now the Sahara Desert was a lush green area. There are rivers which once use to connect with the Nile which have vanished. Some 5,000 years ago, the area became a desert.

What ancient cities might lie under the sands?

[Chode]

do they ever find these in the african jungle

[z3n]

Read Lost City of Z quite a few years back. I recall being quite engaged in it in the middle of the book. Nice plot arc, but I can’t remember the ending. I feel like I was disappointed. Didn’t he die at the end?

[sphinx]

No. Because white supremacy and systemic racism. Thought you knew.

[joe fonebone]

500 to 2400 CE????
What the hell does CE mean???

[cableguymn]

the real question (on leftist minds) is who caused the golbull warming that caused that area to dry up?

[Sirius Lee]

What the hell does CE mean???

Christ's Erasure.

[ought-six]

“For a GREAT read, read “The Lost City of Z” by David Grann.”

I saw the movie a few years ago, and I liked that. I then went to my local library to get the book but it was not carried in the library’s circulation. I had intended to see if my library could find a copy through Inter-Library Loan, but other things came up and I never did.

[GOPJ]

They should also look at south Africa. There are very visible ‘grids’ of what must have once been a HUGE system of waterways. Also, the entire north of Africa looks like a gigantic wave swept over it.

Do you have links? Would love to see the pictures.

[GOPJ]

Though the sites don’t have the much larger monumental centers found in Bolivia, they were connected by a system of roads, bridges and canals, all situated in a large engineered landscape of fields, fish farms and other features. Intriguingly, this low-density, urban culture—which was more like a cluster of suburban communities without an urban center—thrived in the same region where Percey Fawcett vanished in search of his Lost City of Z.

FYI