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'Simply astonishing': Experts just found a massive
lost civilisation hiding in the Amazon
A civilisation that may have once numbered up to 3
million people has been uncovered beneath the Amazon
rainforest's dense canopy, according to a new study.
Researchers used LIDAR a technology that fires pulses
of laser light through gaps in the forest canopy to map
the ground below to survey more than 4,400km of the
southwestern Amazon Basin. The findings were
published in Nature.
Archaeologists now believe the Aquiry civilisation, which
lived in the region from roughly 600BCE to 850CE, may
have been around three times larger than previously
expected. At its peak, their society may have numbered
1.25 3 million people.
The survey uncovered thousands of geometric patterns
built into the Earth, known as geoglyphs, which take
various shapes including circles and squares and appear
to be connected by straight roads or pathways.
"The scale and precision of these constructions are
simply astonishing," lead author and University of
Helsinki archaeologist, Prof Martti Pärssinen, told BBC
Science Focus.
"Based on LiDAR surveys covering 4,500 km², we
estimate that the entire 183,000 km² Aquiry region may
contain approximately 24,000 to 30,000 earthworks
linked by hundreds of roads, revealing a scale of
landscape modification previously unimaginable for this
part of Amazonia."
Before LIDAR technology was able to peek through the
trees, experts could only investigate deforested areas of
the Amazon fuelling a mistaken belief that only the
rainforest's sparser regions had been settled by humans,
and not its denser parts.
"These findings suggest that many other regions across
Amazonia may likewise have been far more densely
populated and intensively modified than previously
assumed, challenging the long-standing view of the
rainforest as a largely untouched wilderness," Pärssinen
said.
The next phase of the project is to use the same laser technology to identify tree species that early societies
domesticated such as those bearing nuts or fruit, and
which continue to grow in the region today.
"We will then investigate how their distribution relates to
different ecosystems, as well as to the locations of
earthworks and ancient road networks," Pärssinen said.
"Simply put, one cannot help but wonder: what else
remains hidden beneath the forest canopy?"
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/amazon-civilisation-lidar
