WASHINGTON:
A immense region of the Amazon forest in Brazil was home to a complex of ancient
towns in which about 50,000 people lived, according to scientists assisted by
satellite images of the
region.
The scientists, whose
findings were published on Thursday in the journal Science, described clusters
of towns and littler villages connected by complex road networks and trapping a
guild doomed by the arrival of Europeans five centuries
ago.
European colonists and the
diseases they brought with them probably killed most of the inhabitants, the
researchers said. The settlements, consisting of networks of walled towns and
smaller villages organized around a central plaza, are now most entirely
overgrown by the forest.
"These
are not cities, but this is urbanism, built around towns," University of Florida
anthropologist Mike Heckenberger said in a
statement.
"If we look at your
modal medieval town or your average Greek polis, most are about the musical scale of
those we find in this part of the Amazon. Only the ones we find are much more
complicated in terms of their planning," Heckenberger
added.
Helped by satellite
imagery, the researchers exhausted more than a decennary uncovering and mapping the
lost communities.
Prior to the
arrival of Europeans starting in 1492, the Americas were home to many prosperous
and impressive societies and big cities. These findings add to the
understanding of the several pre-Columbian
civilizations.
The existence of
the ancient settlements in the Upper Xingu neighborhood of the Amazon in north-central
Brazil means what many experts had considered virgin tropical forests were in
fact heavily affected by past human activity, the scientists
aforementioned.
The US and Brazilian scientists
worked with a appendage of the Kuikuro, an indigenous Amazonian people descended
from settlements' original
inhabitants.
Although the
remains ar almost inconspicuous, they can buoy be identified by members of the Kuikuro
tribe, world Health Organization are thought to be direct descendents of the people wHO built the
towns. The tell-tale traces included "dark earth" that indicated yesteryear human
waste dumps or farming, and concentrations of pottery shards and earthworks.
Each community had an
identical route, always pointing north-east to south-west, which are connected to
a central shopping centre.
The roads were
always orientated this way in keeping with the mid-year summer solstice.
Evidence was constitute of dams and
artificial ponds - thought to have been used for fish agriculture - as well as open
areas and large compost heaps.
More info
