Archeologists have uncovered a cluster of lost cities in the Amazon rainforest that was home to at least 10,000 farmers about 2,000 years ago.
A series of earthen mounds and buried roads in Ecuador was first noticed more than two decades ago by archeologist Stephen Rostain.
However, at the time, “I wasn’t sure how it all fit together,” said Rostain, one of the researchers who reported on the finding on Thursday in the journal Science.
Photo: AP
Recent mapping by laser-sensor technology revealed those sites to be part of a dense network of settlements and connecting roadways, tucked into the forested foothills of the Andes, that lasted about 1,000 years.
“It was a lost valley of cities,” said Rostain, who directs investigations at France’s National Center for Scientific Research. “It’s incredible.”
The settlements were occupied by the Upano people between about 500 BC and 300 to 600 AD — a period roughly contemporaneous with the Roman Empire in Europe, the researchers found.
Residential and ceremonial buildings erected on more than 6,000 earthen mounds were surrounded by agricultural fields with drainage canals. The largest roads were 10m wide and stretched for 10km to 20km.
While it is difficult to estimate populations, the site was home to at least 10,000 inhabitants — and perhaps as many as 15,000 or 30,000 at its peak, said archeologist Antoine Dorison, a study coauthor at the same French institute.
That is comparable to the estimated population of Roman-era London.
“This shows a very dense occupation and an extremely complicated society,” said University of Florida archeologist Michael Heckenberger, who was not involved in the study. “For the region, it’s really in a class of its own in terms of how early it is.”
Jose Iriarte, a University of Exeter archeologist, said it would have required an elaborate system of organized labor to build the roads and thousands of earthen mounds.
“The Incas and Mayans built with stone, but people in Amazonia didn’t usually have stone available to build — they built with mud,” said Iriarte, who had no role in the research. “It’s still an immense amount of labor.”
The Amazon is often thought of as a “pristine wilderness with only small groups of people, but recent discoveries have shown us how much more complex the past really is,” he said.
Scientists have recently also found evidence of intricate rainforest societies that predated European contact elsewhere in the Amazon, including in Bolivia and in Brazil.
“There’s always been an incredible diversity of people and settlements in the Amazon, not only one way to live,” Rostain said. “We’re just learning more about them.”
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