Blockbuster discovery in Amazon reveals ancient civilisation under forest
WeirdNews
Urban society existed in Ecuador long before European colonists came to South America
(Web Desk) - As the Roman Empire was just starting to come into its own, another empire was rising.
In what is now Ecuador, scientists have discovered an ancient network of citadels, gardens, streets and plazas from a sprawling civilization that lived some 2,500 years ago.
The landmark discovery was made after more than two decades of on-the-ground work, technical surveys and excavations and is detailed in a paper published Thursday in the journal Science.
It reveals an unprecedented urban society existed in the Amazon long before European colonists came to South America, and paints a rich picture of life in the region hundreds of years before the rise of the Mayan empire in nearby Mexico and Guatemala.
The researchers write in the study that the discovery challenges old, western ideas that the first complex ancient civilizations were concentrated in Europe and the Middle East, and that the Amazon was somehow devoid of urbanism before European colonists arrived.
Most notably, the study describes a civilization that built complex roads (some as long as 25 kilometers), gardens and terraces, revealing a people that knew how to use the land to their advantage more than 2,500 years ago.
They also found platforms and relics that suggest ritual activity took place in these places.
The study is the culmination of years of work by French anthropologist Stéphen Rostain and a team of researchers, many of whom are from Ecuador.
They found at least 15 distinct settlements in the Upano area of Ecuador, using on-the-ground surveys and excavations, as well as aerial radar maps across the 300-kilometer-square area.
They found evidence of human occupation for more than 1,000 years from 500 B.C.E to 600 C.E.
"Such a discovery is another vivid example of the underestimation of Amazonia’s twofold heritage: environmental but also cultural, and therefore Indigenous," write Rostain and his colleagues in the study.
"We believe that it is crucial to thoroughly revise our preconceptions of the Amazonian world and, in doing so, to reinterpret contexts and concepts in the necessary light of an inclusive and participatory science."
