Scientists have discovered mysterious burial mounds in the southwestern part of the Amazon basin, where ancient urban settlements once stood.
Using remote sensing technology to map the region from the air, the research team found that 1,500 years ago, the ancient Amazon lived in densely populated centers with 22-meter-high mud pyramids surrounded by miles of curved roads.
The level of development of these settlements causes great surprise among scientists: the lead author of the article, archaeologist from the German Archaeological Institute Heiko Brommers, called them “amazing”.
“This is the first direct evidence of urban settlements in this part of the Amazon basin,” says Jonas Gregorio de Sousa, a Spanish archaeologist at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. All this can also be considered further evidence in favor of the serious development of these lands by the ancient Indians, although previously the Amazon was considered a place with untouched wildlife before the arrival of the Europeans.
People lived in the Amazon River Basin – the largest river system in the world, about the size of the continental United States – 9.5 thousand years before the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century, and not only small nomadic tribes with little influence on the environment lived. – We are talking about a large number of real cities and villages, which the first European explorers were able to describe, but later their traces somehow managed to get lost.
Prommers and his colleagues took advantage of the new technology and in 2019 a lidar-equipped helicopter flew over six regions near sites previously thought to be inhabited by the Casarabe culture in South America.
Researchers got more than they expected: Lidar revealed 26 settlements, including 11 that scientists hadn’t expected before.
It could take 400 years to survey such an area of Earth, Bremers says. But why these settlements were abandoned remains a mystery.
Radiocarbon analysis showed that the Kazarapi culture disappeared around 1400 AD.
