'Lost towns' discovered in Amazon

Somehow, I was expecting something like this to come up.

news.bbc.co.uk...

A remote area of the Amazon river basin was once home to densely populated towns, Science journal reports.

Discuss...

[edit on 29-8-2008 by 4N6310]

reply to post by 4N6310


I was going to post this, but you beat me to it!

Another source from USA Today:

www.usatoday.com...

A very interesting article on a civilization @ 1500 years ago that was not as sophisticated as the better known civilizations around the area.

A thread already on that


Beat ya to it! Amazonian settlements

Could this be where these other more ancient civilizations resettled to after their apparent collapse?

reply to post by 4N6310


I'm not sure how much work on those sites has been done and to what cultural level these settlements were at. The reports show an organized urbanism. I would suspect they were agricultural based hunter-gathers, ie they were "semi-domesticated". However we'll have to wait for the published papers and national geo to let us know.

Byrd do you know more about this?

There was a fascinating BBC produced documentary about that area.
They where on the trail of a late 19th century explorer who had gone into the area to find some "lost city" of some sort, and was never heard from again.
He got guides from a tribe that had limited contact with the outside that said they could lead him to the city.
Until in the 1930's someone had made contact with this tribe again and they found something that belonged to him.
The tribal elders told this explorer that an old chief had killed the earlier party and eaten them.
In talking with local anthropologists and archeologists, they found out that the villiage they were at was part of the old network of villages that were connected by trails(roads).
The tribe living there today still lives an a very traditional way.
The grow traditional crops, they also practice aqua-culture, they grow fish in the same man made canals that their ancestors did.

In thier heyday some of the larger towns had populations of up to 10,000 people.

reply to post by punkinworks


I watched this program. The explorer's daughter found a crystal skull in the amazon. She kept the skull till she died and it was then given to her husband. She met her husband, who was fascinated with the mystery, and ended up marrying him---she was probably 25-30 yrs older than the guy. I bet he married her to get his hands on the skull. Anyhow, before she died, her and her young husband went back and this is when they were told that an old chief had killed and eaten the explorers.

If I'm not mistaken, there was a second crystal skull, and they did a ceremony with the two skulls putting them together to create some kind of energy.

It was very interesting

[edit on 29-8-2008 by virraszto]

[edit on 29-8-2008 by virraszto]

Howdy Punkinworks

Ah yes Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, he was one of those guys chasing after lost cities. He was reportedly inspired by the finding of the Khymer ruins and Machu.

reply to post by virraszto


NO,

not that one

reply to post by Hanslune


Hello hans,

yes more likely.


And I believe he was looking for mythical Inca cities.

The city he was likely looking for may have been recently found in a different area.