![]() "In Amazonian archaeology you always have this idea that you find different peoples in different ecosystems," said Schaan. Researchers were especially surprised that earthworks in floodplains and uplands were of a similar style, suggesting they were all built by the same culture. Many of the mounds were symmetrical and slanted to the north, prompting theories that they had astronomical significance. And there is a lot more to discover in these places, it's never-ending. She told National Geographic: "We found this picture is wrong. The discoveries have demolished ideas that soils in the upper Amazon were too poor to support extensive agriculture, says Denise Schaan, a co-author of the study and anthropologist at the Federal University of Pará, in Belém, Brazil. ![]() It is thought they were used for fortifications, homes and ceremonies, and could have maintained a population of 60,000 – more people than in many medieval European cities. Some were ringed by low mounds containing ceramics, charcoal and stone tools. The structures were created by a network of trenches about 36ft (nearly 11 metres) wide and several feet deep, lined by banks up to 3ft high. The 'geoglyph culture' stretches over a region more than 250km across, and exploits both the floodplains and the uplands … we have so far seen no more than a tenth of it." The article adds: "This hitherto unknown people constructed earthworks of precise geometric plan connected by straight orthogonal roads. The structures, many of which have been revealed by the clearance of forest for agriculture, point to a "sophisticated pre-Columbian monument-building society", says the journal Antiquity, which has published the research. Scientists who have mapped the earthworks believe there may be another 2,000 structures beneath the jungle canopy, vestiges of vanished societies. Some date to as early as 200 AD, others to 1283. Spanning 155 miles, the circles, squares and other geometric shapes form a network of avenues, ditches and enclosures built long before Christopher Columbus set foot in the new world. ![]() New satellite imagery and fly-overs have revealed more than 200 huge geometric earthworks carved in the upper Amazon basin near Brazil's border with Bolivia. Now, however, the doomed dreamers have been proved right: there was a great civilisation. The Amazon was too inhospitable, said 20th century scholars, to permit large human settlements. But the jungle swallowed them and nothing was found, prompting the rest of the world to call it a myth. Some seekers called it El Dorado, others the City of Z. ![]()
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