Lost Amazon Civilisation That May Have Had 3 Million People
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"Simply astonishing": Experts just found a massive lost civilisation hiding in the jungle for 2,000 years.
A large ancient population dubbed the Aquiry civilization by archaeologists may have lived in the southwestern Amazon jungle roughly two millennia ago, rewriting what historians thought they knew about the early inhabitants of the deep rainforest. According to a new study published in Nature, researchers say they’ve identified over 20,000 precolonial earthworks in a tiny section - just 3 percent - of the area historically occupied by the Aquiry. The earthworks offer “evidence of a monument-building precolonial civilization” on a much grander scale than ever seen before. “The scale and precision of these constructions is simply astonishing,” said the study’s lead author, University of Helsinki archaeologist Martti Pärssinen, according to New Scientist.
This ancient civilisation that may have once numbered up to 3 million people has been uncovered by using modern technology beneath the Amazon rainforest's dense canopy. Researchers used LIDAR - a device that fires pulses of laser light through gaps in the forest canopy to map the ground below - to survey more than 1,740 sq. miles (4,500 sq. km) of the southwestern Amazon Basin.
Click to enlarge | All images credit: Martti Pärssinen
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 to 3 million people.
The earthworks often feature ditches and embankments, and come shaped in circles and squares but can also include octagons and pentagrams. Likely popular as ceremonial or political bases, the sites average about seven acres, with the largest approaching 123 acres, containing ditches up to 16 feet deep and 30 to 43 feet wide.
The previous belief that the Amazon was an untouched wilderness gets dented with every new study, showing that people have long made the jungle their own. “That old idea of a pristine Amazonia falls apart," says study co-author Alceu Ranzi, a geographer at the University of Acre, Brazil.
