Advanced imaging technology has unearthed massive networks of cities in areas of what is now thick Amazon rainforest. Using lidar (light detection and ranging), scientists have discovered large areas that show raised earthen platforms in neat rows. They are connected by extensive networks of roads.
Ranging from 3000-1500 years ago, the ancient cities show that this part of the world once had large, seemingly advanced civilizations.
It’s impressive on many levels. For us, it’s profound to think about the thick Amazon rainforest, seemingly “untouched”, actually being home to hundreds of thousands of people.
Located mostly in eastern Ecuador in the Upano Valley, these recent discoveries widen our knowledge of South American history. They show that human civilization has been prevalent more widely than the history books say.
“Using airborne laser-scanning technology (Lidar), Rostain and his colleagues discovered a long-lost network of cities extending across 300sq km in the Ecuadorean Amazon, complete with plazas, ceremonial sites, drainage canals and roads that were built 2,500 years ago and had remained hidden for thousands of years.
They also identified more than 6,000 rectangular earthen platforms believed to be homes and communal buildings in 15 urban centres surrounded by terraced agricultural fields.”
-BBC
“In this rainforest, archaeologists say, lay the bones of sprawling ancient cities: earthworks that were once roads, canals, plazas and platforms for homes where thousands of people had lived for centuries, long before Europeans ever tried to chart South America.
The cluster of interconnected cities was only recently mapped in the Upano Valley of eastern Ecuador, a research team reported this month in the journal Science, working off decades of research and laser-mapping technology that has helped to revolutionize archaeology.
With the technology, called lidar, researchers were able to pierce the forest cover and map the ground below it, documenting five major settlements and 10 secondary sites across more than 115 square miles.”
Photo Credit: Stéphen Rostain
