The Amazon forest is dense as it is and difficult to penetrate, either on foot or with scanning technology. But over the past few years, improved light detection and ranging scans have begun to penetrate the forest canopy, revealing previously unknown evidence of past Amazonian cultures. In a new paper, CNSR archaeologist Stephen Rostain and his colleagues describe evidence of such an Amazonian agricultural culture that began more than 2,000 years ago. The authors described more than 6,000 platforms distributed in a geometric pattern connected by roads and intertwined with agricultural landscapes and river drainage channels in the Upano Valley of Amazonian Ecuador, at the eastern foothills of the Andes. Such large-scale early development in the Upper Amazon resembles similar Maya urban systems in Central America.
Rostain other. They discovered a dense system of pre-Hispanic urban centers, characterized by constructed platforms and plazas, and connected by large straight roads.Image credit: Rostain other., doi: 10.1126/science.adi6317.
Although a growing number of studies focus on the extent and scale of pre-Hispanic occupation of the Amazon, evidence of large-scale urbanization remains elusive.
Rostain and his co-authors found evidence of an agricultural civilization that began more than 2,500 years ago in the Upano Valley of Amazonian Ecuador, a region at the eastern foothills of the Andes.
“Based on more than 20 years of interdisciplinary research, including fieldwork and light detection and ranging (LIDAR) mapping, we depict urbanism on a scale never before recorded in Amazonia,” they said. said.
“We describe the construction of more than 6,000 anthropogenic rectangular earth platforms and plazas connected by footpaths and roads and surrounded by extensive agricultural landscapes and river drainages within 300 km.2 This is the research area. ”
The authors identified at least 15 different settlements of varying size based on clusters of structures.
However, the most notable element of this built environment is the extensive and complex regional road network that connects the city center with the surrounding hinterland.
Archaeological excavations show that the construction and occupation of the platforms and roads took place between 500 BC and 300-600 AD, and was carried out by groups of the Kiramopu culture and later the Upano culture.
Such large-scale early development in the upper Amazon is comparable to similar Maya urban systems recently noted in Mexico and Guatemala.
“The Upano site is different from other monumental sites discovered in the Amazon; these are more recent and less extensive,” the researchers said.
“Discoveries like this are another vivid example of how the Amazon's dual heritage, not only environmental but also cultural and indigenous, is undervalued.”
“We believe it is important to radically revise preconceptions about the Amazonian world and, in doing so, reinterpret contexts and concepts in terms necessary for inclusive and participatory science.”
team's paper Published in the January 11th issue of the magazine science.
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Stefan Rostain other. 2024. Two thousand years of garden urbanization in the upper Amazon River basin. science 383 (6679): 183-189; doi: 10.1126/science.adi6317
Source: www.sci.news
