- The authors of a new study say they have found 24 previously unrecorded pre-Columbian earthworks in the Amazon, and they estimate there may be more than 10,000 such sites still hidden throughout the forest.
- Ancient earthwork structures represent one of the types of formations found in the Amazon that provide evidence of Indigenous occupation by pre-Columbian earth-building societies.
- An airborne sensor was used to scan data from areas of the Amazon in what the scientists say is “groundbreaking” research.
- This research demonstrates that the Amazon has long been home to Indigenous peoples and is also important for organizations and communities in their efforts to demarcate new Indigenous territories, the general coordinator of the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB) says.
The Amazon has long been considered home to Indigenous peoples, dating back thousands of years. They worked the land in ways we are familiar with today. They built ditches, ponds, wells and other structures that show the rainforest was not “untouched” as often mistakenly thought. Centuries later, these populations, and the societies they formed, were violently disrupted with the arrival of the first European vessels in the Americas.
The true extent of Amazonian settlements and landscape transformation by these Indigenous populations, however, remains uncertain, despite the best efforts of researchers.
Now, newly published research in the journal Science unveils an unprecedented estimate of the number of pre-Columbian earthworks still hidden in the Amazon rainforest, which is based on both previously known archaeological sites and new findings reported in the study.
In total, researchers have uncovered more than 20 newly recognized earthworks beneath the Amazonian forest canopy, including a fortified village, defensive and ceremonial sites, crowned mountains, megalithic structures and riverine sites on floodplains, all thanks to an advanced remote sensing technology known as lidar, which stands for “Light Detection and Ranging.”
Capable of collecting information on the structure of the forest and on the terrain below the forest, the airborne sensor has revolutionized the way information is obtained about the Earth’s surface by enabling archaeological discoveries in densely forested areas such as the one in the recently published study.
The paper’s authors estimate there may be more than 10,000 earthworks still hidden in the forest, and further identified more than 50 species of domesticated trees that indicate the likelihood of earthwork occurrence, suggesting active Indigenous forest management practices by pre-Columbian societies.
