Amazonian Indians More Advanced Than We Knew
Submitted by coldrum on Tuesday, 13 July 2010 Page Views: 1364
Pre-ContactFor decades, archaeologists thought of the Amazonian Indians as lowly hunter-gatherers who inhabited widely scattered villages and barely eked out a living in the harsh landscape.Now that image is collapsing. In a study to be published later this summer, scientists detail an ancient system of monumental public works in the eastern plains of the Llanos de Moxos, Bolivian Amazonia. The researchers relied in part on satellite pictures to penetrate the thick jungle, allowing them to inventory vast earthen mounds 25 to 30 feet high and tidy networks of canals and causeways, all built centuries ago.
The sheer volume of dirt that had to be moved to build these structures suggests that the area was densely populated and politically organized, the researchers say. And the neat patterns of mounds, canals and other features on the landscape indicate that the infrastructure was highly planned and well-organized -- not exactly the handiwork of villagers leading a hand-to-mouth existence.
The scientists documented nearly 600 miles of canals and causeways, which altogether required moving enough earth to fill the Great Pyramid at Giza twice. But it's the mounds that are especially impressive. The biggest of the mounds -- earthen hills topped by pyramid-like structures and often at the center of a network of canals and causeways -- are higher than six-story buildings, and the average mound covered 50 percent more area than a football field.
"They are amazing," says Umberto Lombardo of the University of Bern, one of the authors of the new study, which will be published in the August edition of the Journal of Archaeological Science. "You get to this mound and start going up and up and up. ... You feel like you are in the mountains, the Alps."
Scientists had known that these structures existed, but this is the first time that anyone has systematically counted and mapped them, says Clark Erickson of the University of Pennsylvania, who studies the same area of the Amazon.
One of these structures is the Loma Chacolatalito.
For more, see www.aolnews.com and Journal of Archaeological Science.
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