Ancient Amazon civilisation laid bare by felled forest

NS ^ | 10 Dec 2009 | Linda Geddes

[BGHater]

Signs of what could be a previously unknown ancient civilisation are emerging from beneath the felled trees of the Amazon. Some 260 giant avenues, ditches and enclosures have been spotted from the air in a region straddling Brazil's border with Bolivia.

The traditional view is that before the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese in the 15th century there were no complex societies in the Amazon basin – in contrast to the Andes further west where the Incas built their cities. Now deforestation, increased air travel and satellite imagery are telling a different story.

"It's never-ending," says Denise Schaan of the Federal University of Pará in Belém, Brazil, who made many of the new discoveries from planes or by examining Google Earth images. "Every week we find new structures." Some of them are square or rectangular, while others form concentric circles or complex geometric figures such as hexagons and octagons connected by avenues or roads. The researchers describe them all as geoglyphs.

Garden villages

Their discovery, in an area of northern Bolivia and western Brazil, follows other recent reports of vast sprawls of interconnected villages known as "garden cities" in north central Brazil, dating from around AD 1400.

The geoglyphs are formed by ditches up to 11 metres wide and 1 to 2 metres deep. They range from 90 to 300 metres in diameter and are thought to date from around 2000 years ago up to the 13th century.

The geoglyphs are thought to date from around 2000 years ago up to the 13th century

Some 260 giant avenues, ditches and enclosures have been spotted from the air in a region straddling Brazil's border with Bolivia

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

The traditional view is that before the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese in the 15th century there were no complex societies in the Amazon basin

And yet the flipping Spanish and Portuguese who were actually the first in told them that there were large and complex in the Amazon basin.

Why do we have a tendency to write off multiple first hand accounts as lies?

[votemout]

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/expedition-week/3819/Overview

Lost cities of the Amazon.

[LibertyRocks]

Thanks for the ping! Absolutely fascinating...

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks LibertyRocks!