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The findings raise big questions, says Susanna Hecht of the University of California in Los Angeles.įor starters, it forces a rethink of the long-held assumption that these parts of the Amazon were virtually empty before colonisation. They built with earth and, once they were gone, the forest reclaimed the land, leaving little trace of the once considerable urbanisation. Unlike ancient Andean civilisations, the Kuikuro and other indigenous peoples from the Amazon had little stone close at hand. It is likely that when European colonisers arrived in South America in the early 16th century, the indigenous population was decimated and urban clusters were abandoned. What happened to these towns? Some modern Kuikuro villages still stand on original sites, and in these villages the primary, or high-ranking, houses lie south-east and north-west of the central plaza – a similar pattern to the ancient orientation. The researchers estimate the population of each village and town would have been between 2, and all 15 clusters could have been home to more than 50,000 people. Return of the forestĪlthough the team have looked at the detail of just two of these urban clusters, they have found evidence of another 13, covering a total area of more than 20,000 square kilometres – equivalent to the size of New Jersey or Wales. The towns, villages and hamlets were interlinked by roads, the largest of which followed the direction of the sun at the mid-year solstice. They were surrounded by smaller, non-walled residential hamlets. Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/ next largest residential centres are 3 to 5 kilometres to the south-east and north-west of each centre slightly smaller centres are between 8 km and 10 km from the centres, to the south-west and north-east.Įach of these “towns” had its own central plaza and was protected by an earthen wall. Erle Ellis of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, says such evidence suggests that we should be dating the start of the Anthropocene – the era of human domination of the planet – to thousands of years ago rather than in the middle of 20th century.
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Dolores Piperno of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama recently argued that “recent investigations of soils in parts of the western Amazon… found little vegetation disturbance“.Ĭlement and his co-authors agree that “the idea of a domesticated Amazonia… contrasts strongly with reports of empty forests, which continue to captivate scientific and popular media”.īut the idea of a domesticated Amazon complements research in other rainforest regions, including the Congo basin and South-East Asia, that also suggest that much of what seems pristine is actually regrowth after dense human occupation. The remains date back 3000 years or more, say the authors, who include geographer William Denevan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and anthropologist Michael Heckenberger of the University of Florida at Gainesville – both pioneers of the idea that the Amazon has long been modified by humans. Before the arrival of Europeans, the region’s population may have reached 50 million.
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These fertile “dark earths”, or terra preta, may cover 150,000 square kilometres, much of it now reclaimed by rainforests. Meanwhile, agriculturalists have discovered that many forest soils have been mulched and composted with waste. Remote sensing has revealed extensive earthworks, including cities, causeways, canals, graveyards and huge areas of ridged fields that kept crops like manioc, maize and squash clear of floods and frosts. Archaeologists have uncovered dense urban centres that would have been home to up to 10,000 inhabitants along riverbanks, with fields and cultivated orchards of Brazil nuts, palm and fruit trees stretching for tens of kilometres. The evidence for this radical rethink has been stacking up for some time.