'Lost towns' discovered in the Amazon rainforest

Post Reply New Topic

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7586860.stm

The remote Amazon river basin was once home to densely populated towns and villages, Science journal reports.

This part of the Amazon, once thought to be virgin forest, has in fact been touched by extensive human activity.

Researchers found traces of a grid-like pattern of settlements connected by road networks and arranged around large central plazas.

There is also evidence of farming and wetland management, including possible remains of fish farms.

The settlements are now almost completely overgrown by rainforest.

The ancient urban communities date back to before the first Europeans set foot in the Upper Xingu region of the Brazilian Amazon in the 15th Century.

Urban planning

Professor Mike Heckenberger, from the University of Florida, in Gainesville, said: "These are not cities, but this is urbanism, built around towns."

"They have quite remarkable planning and self-organisation, more so than many classical examples of what people would call urbanism," he said.

Although the remains are almost invisible, they can be identified by members of the Kuikuro tribe, who are thought to be direct descendents of the people who built the towns.

The tell-tale traces included "dark earth" that indicated past human waste dumps or farming, and concentrations of pottery shards and earthworks.

The researchers also made use of satellite images and GPS navigation to uncover and map the settlements over the course of a decade.

The communities consisted of clusters of 60-hectare (150-acre) towns and smaller villages spread out over the rainforest.

Road network

Like medieval European and ancient Greek towns, those forming the Amazonian urban landscape were surrounded by large walls. These were composed of earthworks, the remains of which have survived.

Each community had an identical road, always pointing north-east to south-west, which are connected to a central plaza.

The roads were always oriented this way in keeping with the mid-year summer solstice.

Evidence was found of dams and artificial ponds - thought to have been used for fish farming - as well as open areas and large compost heaps.

The people who once lived in the settlements are thought to have been wiped out by European colonists and the diseases they brought with them.

I read about this last year in the book "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus". There is evidence of massive civilization all over South America before Europeans showed up. It's a sad myth that the America's were technologically inferior to the rest of the world. Just look at the calendar system they designed and you immediately know they had an excellent understanding of astronomy. Their agricultural techniques were pretty amazing too. It's sad how much the world lost because of smallpox decimation and the destruction of artifacts and writings deemed by the church as pagan.

I agree. Their civilisations were technologically advanced, militarily inferior. The most interesting thing I noticed was the Mesoamerican ballgame. They discovered the process of vulcanisation several millenia before Charles Goodyear!

A good deal of the world's food supply is from plants domesticated here over thousands of years, Beans, Corn, Squash, Potatoes, and hundreds more, and equal effort went into medicals, and flowers.

What was discovered in the Amazon was an artifical soil, the Black Earth, that is not natural, is very fertile, and allowed for high populations in a small area.

In Middle America, there was a water system for irrigation, drinking, and carrying away wastes, that would support 5,000,000 people.

Up until 1937, the tallest building in the West was Mayan.

Hundreds of food crops have been lost, and no new ones developed.

In a few hundred years of genocide and looting, the land is becoming exhausted.

All knowledge of medicine, mathematics, science, was destroyed, all the books burned, the teachers killed, even the language forbidden.

Europeans are superior because they say so?

The Chinese got rid of them, India, Africa, The Americas will too.

They have become a Minority here, Genocide is never forgotten.

Welcome to the Post Colonial World.

Yeah, it sucks. I'm of European extraction myself, and my ancestors had a hand in the looting of North America, sometimes being an integral part of it (one of my ancestors followed Daniel Boone into Kentucky and settled at Boonesborough in direct violation of the king's orders, a situation that eventually led to the American Revolution). I was not directly responsible, but I know how karma works, and that blood must be repaid in blood. I'm willing to fall on my sword to avenge the global genocide perpetrated by my ancestors, but most Europeans aren't so amenable. They'd rather fight unto death. Mugabe eventually got rid of the European farmers who had a stranglehold on Zimbabwe, and eventually the true peoples of the Americas will reclaim their lands. The best thing I can do is not produce any more Europeans. That's all I can do. There's no guarantee of stopping the cycle of death and rebirth via suicide.

Zimbabawean farms? The ones that were promptly looted, burned down, and left to rot, wasting thousands of hectares of arable land and pasture, and leaving his economy right up s**t creek, sans paddle, in a cardboard boat during sinking season? Way to effectively manage race relations... Methinks he might well have been better served leaving the white farmers well alone. At least then his people would have been fed...

So because some europeans have done bad things, all things europeans have done must be bad? Dont be so small-minded. Ever noticed how the arab nations had a slave trade way before white europeans industrialised the process. Note carefully how the Zulu nation spent many happy years slaughtering anyone who wasnt a zulu before we ever showed up. Ponder how pleasant it might be to be an indian widow thrown on a funeral pyre, or dragged from your bed and sacrificed to Kali before we got involved. Consider how well post colonial africa is actually governed before you knock colonial government. Fight unto death? Its not like european militaries have a tradition of suicidal attacks, unlike say the Japanese, or the Muslims... The death or glory moments were ususally not actually optional, merely forced upon the european troops. Consider Gordon at Khartoum. No-one there actually wanted to be part of a last stand slaughter. The charge of the light brigade was a mistake,albeit technically a successful one.

Trust google.. go and do some research before you form opinions....