[DannyTN]

"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."

How on earth do they jump to the conclusion that it was disease brought by European colonists? There is no indication they know who built them, why, or even when? Much less why those structures were abandoned.

[bert]

......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