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Laser-sensor technology reveals network of earthen mounds and buried roads in rainforest area of Ecuador
Archaeologists have uncovered a cluster of lost cities in the Amazon rainforest that was home to at least 10,000 farmers about 2,000 years ago.
A series of earthen mounds and buried roads in Ecuador was first noticed more than two decades ago by archaeologist Stéphen Rostain. But at the time, “I wasn’t sure how it all fit together,” said Rostain, one of the researchers who reported on the finding in the journal Science on Thursday.
Recent mapping by laser-sensor technology revealed those sites to be part of a dense network of settlements and connecting roadways, tucked into the forested foothills of the Andes, that lasted about 1,000 years.
“It was a lost valley of cities,” said Rostain, who directs investigations at France’s National Center for Scientific Research. “It’s incredible.”
The settlements were occupied by the Upano people between about 500BC and AD300 to 600 – a period roughly contemporaneous with the Roman empire in Europe, the researchers found.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Recent mapping by laser-sensor technology revealed those sites to be part of a dense network of settlements and connecting roadways, tucked into the forested foothills of the Andes, that lasted about 1,000 years.
The settlements were occupied by the Upano people between about 500BC and AD300 to 600 – a period roughly contemporaneous with the Roman empire in Europe, the researchers found.
While it is difficult to estimate populations, the site was home to at least 10,000 inhabitants – and perhaps as many as 15,000 or 30,000 at its peak, said archaeologist Antoine Dorison, a study co-author at the same French institute.
“This shows a very dense occupation and an extremely complicated society,” said the University of Florida archaeologist Michael Heckenberger, who was not involved in the study.
José Iriarte, a University of Exeter archaeologist, said it would have required an elaborate system of organized labor to build the roads and thousands of earthen mounds.
Scientists have recently also found evidence of intricate rainforest societies that predated European contact elsewhere in the Amazon, including in Bolivia and in Brazil.
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