The Kunguints area in the Upano Valley is similar in size to the Giza Plateau and was home to at least 10,000 farmers around 2,000 years ago. : Antoine Dorison/Steven Rostain
Scientists have discovered the remains of a vast network of mysterious ancient cities in the world's largest rainforest that could revolutionize our understanding of human civilization.
Few — During excavations, settlements were discovered that resemble the Mayan “garden cities” and date back to around 500 BC. BC, are the largest and oldest representatives of their type, which suggests that the mysterious Upano people existed before the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs in pre-colonial America.
Although the heyday of civilization as a whole occurred during the era of the Roman Empire, the construction of the most The earliest buildings appear to have begun about 2,500 years ago. This makes the site approximately 1,000 years older than the previous earliest known city in the Amazon.
Estimates of the number of inhabitants range from tens to hundreds of thousands.
“This is a major, very important discovery,” says José Iriarte, a professor at the University of Exeter and an expert on Amazon archeology who was not involved in the study.
“It shows a very complex, independent, distinctive civilization, which was perhaps one of the most developed in America.»
This view contradicts the traditional view of scientists on human development in the Amazon.
He believed that the peoples there were hunter-gatherers or small-scale farmers, but never developed into large hierarchical societies such as the vast Andean Inca Empire, the powerful Mayan city-states of Central America, or the Aztec territorial dominance of much of Mexico. today.
The reason for this interpretation is partly that organic remains, from food to clothing, rot quickly in the hot, humid conditions of the jungle, leaving little or no traces that modern scientists can detect.
>
Meanwhile, in the Amazon there is no stone from which to build, unlike the “monumental” cultures of the Andes and Mesoamerica, which left stunning archaeological finds, from Machu Picchu to the huge pyramids of the Aztecs.
<р>The settlements include five major cities and 10 smaller towns spread over an area of more than 300 square kilometers (116 sq mi) in Ecuador's Upano Valley, an area of cloud forest where the jungle meets the Andean foothills.
Features include hillside hill. terraces, rectangular agricultural fields with irrigation ditches, and a complex system of straight roads and canals are all hallmarks of urban planning in a centralized, complex society.
The largest settlement, known as Kilamope, located in the center of the site, by size similar to the Giza Plateau, home to some of Egypt's most impressive pyramids and the Great Sphinx.
Laster Mapping image shows a cluster of lost cities with complexes of rectangular platforms located around low plazas in the Upano Valley, Ecuador . Photo: Antoine Dorison/Steven Rosten
The food remains appear to indicate that the inhabitants grew crops such as corn, sweet potatoes and cassava, according to a study published in the journal Science by a team from France's National Center for Scientific Research.
Ceramics were also discovered showing that they drank chicha, a sweet corn beer that is still a favorite drink among many indigenous peoples of Latin America.
The discovery was made using lidar, a laser mapping technology. Flying over the site in a light aircraft, the team, led by Professor Stefan Rosten, was able to peer through the vegetation and create a detailed 3D image of the area, showing everything from houses to roads some 30 feet wide and several miles long that are currently hidden underground. undergrowth.
Other ancient Amazonian cities have been discovered in recent years in Bolivia and Brazil. But, according to Dr. Iriarte, the scale, dates and unique cultural features of the settlements in the Upano Valley suggest that there may have been many other complex civilizations in the Amazon basin, the remains of which are also waiting to be discovered.
Свежие комментарии