Archaeologists working deep in the Amazon rainforest have discovered a vast network of cities dating back 2,500 years.
Highly structured pre-Hispanic settlements with wide avenues and long, straight roads, plazas and clusters of monumental platforms have been found in Amazonian Ecuador’s Upano Valley, in the eastern foothills of the Andes, according to a study published in the journal Science. Thursday.
The discovery of the oldest and largest urban structure network ever built and excavated in the Amazon was the result of more than two decades of research in the region by the team from France, Germany, Ecuador and Puerto Rico.
The research began with fieldwork before using a remote sensing method called light detection and ranging or lidar, which uses laser light to detect structures beneath thick tree canopies.
The study’s lead author, Stéphen Rostain, archaeologist and Director of Research at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), called the discovery “incredible.”
‘Advanced engineering’
“Lidar gave us an overview of the area and we were able to greatly appreciate the size of the areas,” he told CNN on Friday, adding that it showed them a “complete network” of excavated roads. “Lidar was the cherry on the cake.”
The first people to live here 3,000 years ago had small, scattered houses, Rostain said.
But between about 500 BCE and 300 to 600 CE, the Kilamope and later Upano cultures began building mounds and erecting their homes on earthen platforms, according to the study’s authors. These platforms will be organized around a low, square plaza.
Data from LiDAR revealed more than 6,000 platforms in the southern half of the 600 square kilometers (232 square miles) area surveyed.
The platforms were mostly rectangular, but a few were circular, measuring about 20 meters by 10 meters (66 feet by 33 feet), according to the study. They were usually built around a square in groups of three or six. Plazas also often had a central platform.
The team also discovered monumental complexes with much larger platforms, which probably had a civil or ceremonial function.
At least 15 clusters of complexes identified as settlements have been discovered.
Some settlements were protected by moats, while near some large complexes there were obstacles on the roads. This suggests that the settlements were exposed to threats from the outside or from tensions between groups, the researchers said.
Even the most isolated complexes were connected by paths and a vast network of larger, straight roads with curbs.
The team found land cultivation features such as drainage areas and terraces in vacant buffer zones between complexes. According to the research, these were connected to a network of pathways.
“That’s why I call it garden cities,” Rostain said, adding: “This is a complete revolution in our paradigm about the Amazon.”
“We have to consider that not all Indigenous (people) in the rainforest are semi-nomadic tribes lost in the forest looking for food. “These were very diverse, a variety of cases, and some of them were also related to (an) urban system, (a) stratified society,” he said.
The overall organization of the cities suggests “the presence of advanced engineering” at the time, according to the study authors, who concluded that garden urbanism in the Upano Valley “provides further evidence that Amazonia was not the pristine jungle it was once depicted.”
Rostain said we should imagine the pre-Columbian Amazon “like an anthill” where everyone was busy with activities.
Similar sites found in the Americas
This newly discovered urban network is closely aligned with other areas found in the tropical forests of Panama, Guatemala, Belize, Brazil and Mexico, according to landscape archaeologist Carlos Morales-Aguilar, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. did not participate in the study.
Calling the research “groundbreaking,” he told CNN that the study not only “provides concrete evidence of early and advanced urban planning in the Amazon, but also contributes significantly to our understanding of the cultural and environmental heritage of Indigenous societies in this region.”
In 2022, Morales-Aguilar was part of a team of researchers who used LiDAR to uncover hundreds of ancient, interconnected Mayan cities, towns, and villages in northern Guatemala, as well as a vast swath of 177 kilometers (177 kilometers) across northern Guatemala. a network of elevated stone paths connecting communities.
He said the findings in this latest study reflect advanced techniques in agriculture and urban planning that he observed in northern Guatemala and “offer new insights into the complexities of these early societies.”
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