Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will become the first sitting president to visit the Amazon rainforest later this month when he travels to Brazil as part of a six-day trip to Latin America for a pair of international summits, the White House said Thursday. Biden will start his trip with a Nov. 14-16 visit to Lima, Peru, where he will meet with President Dina Boluarte and attend the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. From there, he will travel to Manaus and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil from Nov. 17-19. In Manaus, Biden will visit the rainforest....

Ancient human faces believed to have been carved into rock up to 2,000 years ago have been revealed in the Amazon.The previously hidden petroglyphs were spotted on a riverbank after an extreme drought last week caused water levels to plummet to their lowest level in more than a century.Most of the engravings on the River Negro – a major tributary of the Amazon – are of facial expressions, some smiling and others looking grim.Several have been seen before but now there are a greater variety it should help to establish the origin of the carvings, experts say.'The engravings are prehistoric,...

Proto-Sinaitic led to the development of the Phoenician alphabet and its variants, many characters from which are clearly visible within the Uruguayan petroglyphs. Based upon this hypothesis, the characters would be dated from 1850 BC to 1100 BC. After this date (1100 BC) came the fully developed, 22 character, Phoenician 'international' writing system subsequently used by all West Semitic languages. I observed that many of the 'new international' characters do not appear among the petroglyphs suggesting movement away from this particular coastline 'port of call' some time after 1100 BC... Proto-Sinaitic has, allegedly, been found in Brazil at Itacoatiara, near...

A series of ancient underwater etchings has been uncovered near the jungle city of Manaus, following a drought in the Brazilian Amazon. The previously submerged images -- engraved on rocks and possibly up to 7,000 years old -- were reportedly discovered by a fisherman after the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon river, fell to its lowest level in more than 100 years last month... Though water levels are now rising again, partly covering the apparently stone age etchings, local researchers photographed them before they began to disappear under the river's dark waters. Archaeologists who have studied the photographs...

SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - A Brazilian passenger plane with 155 people on board disappeared over the Amazon jungle on Friday after colliding with a small plane, the company and news reports said. Gol flight 1907, flying from the principle Amazon city of Manaus bound for the national capital Brasilia, disappeared after losing radar contact, the company said. The head of Brazil's airports authority, Infraero, said the Gol aircraft collided with another smaller plane, Globo news agency reported. The smaller plane, an executive jet, was able to land in a town called Serra do Cachimbo even though it suffered wing...