Amazon explorers uncover signs of a real El Dorado

[IndianaGreen]

Amazon explorers uncover signs of a real El Dorado

Satellite technology detects giant mounds over 155 miles, pointing to sophisticated pre-Columbian culture

Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 January 2010 19.08 GMT

It is the legend that drew legions of explorers and adventurers to their deaths: an ancient empire of citadels and treasure hidden deep in the Amazon jungle.

Spanish conquistadores ventured into the rainforest seeking fortune, followed over the centuries by others convinced they would find a lost civilisation to rival the Aztecs and Incas.

Some seekers called it El Dorado, others the City of Z. But the jungle swallowed them and nothing was found, prompting the rest of the world to call it a myth. The Amazon was too inhospitable, said 20th century scholars, to permit large human settlements.

Now, however, the doomed dreamers have been proved right: there was a great civilisation. 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.

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. Some date to as early as 200 AD, others to 1283.

Scientists who have mapped the earthworks believe there may be another 2,000 structures beneath the jungle canopy, vestiges of vanished societies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/05/amazon-dorado-satellite-discovery

[Bobbieo]

1. The climate was probably less 'rain forest' at the time.Just a guess.

[applegrove]

2. Cool!

[peacetalksforall]

3. Well, might this be an opportunity to call a peace truce in the area among noble men and women

of this globe - while a decision is made about exploring, digging, exposing.

We don't really have to invade and occupy Bolivia for its earth resources as we lean towards and we don't really have to demean the country's elected President and hint that he is another of our enemies.

Just because hit men don't succeed in Bolivia doesn't mean the country or the people are evil - they are only evil to the very rich.

I wish this to be a peaceful pursuit with no deaths, no exiles, no coups.

We have to wake up and mend one of these days.

Let this be it. Let us show our mangaminity and humanity.

[Bonobo]

4. Too bad Fawcett didn't have google earth. nt

[sonias]

5. Fascinating

Look forward to reading more on this culture as more research is done.

From the paper mentioned in the article in the OP

Pre-Columbian geometric earthworks in the upper Purús: a complex society in western Amazonia
(snip)

The fact that the Amazonian geoglyphs have only been noticed and publicised in the last
few years deserves an explanation. After their abandonment, which we believed happened
at least 500 years ago, they were heavily covered by vegetation. In the last 30 years, however,
areas once believed to be pristine forest began to be cleared for the cattle industry. In their
new treeless, savanna-like landscape, the ancient earthen structures became visible, especially
from the sky. If they were initially visible from aeroplanes, researchers can now search for
them using satellite imagery freely available in Google Earth. Aerial remote sensing has in
fact been more efficient than ground survey, since some structures are filled in by recent
sedimentation, and thus hard to see at ground level. In fact, their enormous size makes it
easier to distinguish their shape and configuration from an aerial perspective. Preliminary
surveys in a number of sites have been done in several short field seasons.

Sonia