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Finding the lost city: Does the Amazon jungle conceal a vanished empire?
Boston Globe ^ | Sunday, February 22, 2009 | David Grann

Posted on 02/23/2009 3:22:34 PM PST by SunkenCiv

Many modern scientists have assumed that no complex civilization could have emerged in so hostile an environment, where the soil is agriculturally poor, mosquitoes transport lethal diseases, and predators lurk amid the forest canopy. The Amazon's brutal conditions have fueled one of the most enduring theories of human development: environmental determinism... Yet in recent years archeologists have begun to find evidence of what Fawcett had always claimed: ancient ruins buried deep in the Amazon, in places ranging from the Bolivian flood plains to the Brazilian forests. These ruins include enormous man-made earth mounds, plazas, geometrically aligned causeways, bridges, elaborately engineered canal systems, and even an apparent astronomical observatory tower made of huge granite rocks... Fawcett also studied the 16th- and 17th-century chronicles of the El Dorado hunters. Even though the conquistadores had not found a golden kingdom, they had reported seeing "cities that glistened in white," with temples, public squares, palisade walls, causeways, and exquisite artifacts... while Fawcett was climbing a desolate mound of earth above the flood plains of the Bolivian Amazon, he noticed something sticking out of the ground. He scooped it into his hand: it was a shard of pottery. He started to scour the soil. Virtually everywhere he scratched, he later wrote, he turned up bits of ancient, brittle pottery. He thought the craftsmanship was as refined as anything from ancient Greece or Rome or China. "Wherever there are 'alturas,' that is high ground above the plains" in the Amazon basin, Fawcett said, "there are artifacts." And that wasn't all: extending between these alturas, there appeared to be some sort of geometrically aligned paths. They looked, he could swear, like "roads" and "causeways."

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


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: godsgravesglyphs
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To: potlatch

.

A new SciFi/Food Channel show!

It could fire ketsup torpedos too -


61 posted on 03/13/2009 5:15:57 PM PDT by devolve (-- When Hussein II goes to the john - It is a "summit" --)
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To: devolve

Gotta be a car in that scenario to make it complete!
SciFi/Food/Car Channel. A space car that serves burgers?


62 posted on 03/13/2009 8:58:07 PM PDT by potlatch
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To: potlatch

.

A Continental Mach X with built-in retracyible drive-in window trays that double as wings when needed.


63 posted on 03/13/2009 11:49:37 PM PDT by devolve (-- When Hussein II goes to the john - It is a "summit" --)
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