Archaeologists Discovered Dozens of Ancient Amazon Villages

Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of hundreds of villages in the rainforest, away from major rivers, that were home to different communities speaking a variety of languages.
Tuesday, archaeologists announced the discovery of 81 previously unknown, lost villages in a small portion of the Amazon region, which in total cover more than 2.1 million square miles of tropical terrain in eight countries, including Brazil, Peru and Ecuador.
In addition to the villages, roads and farms were also discovered. The study said there is evidence for hundreds more villages that have yet to be uncovered in the Amazon. Scientists say that portion of the southern Amazon rain forest was once home to 500,000 to 1 million people before the Europeans arrived in the late 1400s and early 1500s.
Researchers say the new discoveries are helping to unpick what the Amazon would have been like before Europeans arrived.
“The idea that the Amazon was a pristine forest, untouched by humans, home to scattered nomadic populations … we already knew that was not true,” said Dr Jonas Gregorio de Souza, first author of the study from the University of Exeter. “The big debate is how populations were distributed in pre-Columbian times in the Amazon.”
After being hidden for centuries, these strange shapes have been made visible because of deforestation over the past few years.
“Our research shows we need to re-evaluate the history of the Amazon,” said study co-author José Iriarte, also of the University of Exeter. “It certainly wasn’t an area populated only near the banks of large rivers and the people who lived there did change the landscape.”
> Shiuly Akter