More on lost Amazon Civilization

Saturday, September 20, 2003, 12:22 A.M. Pacific

Amazonian find stuns researchers
By Thomas H. Maugh II
Los Angeles Times

Deep in the Amazon forest of Brazil, archaeologists have found a network
of 1,000-year-old towns and villages that refutes two long-held notions:
that the pre-Columbian tropical rain forest was a pristine environment
that had not been altered by humans, and that the rain forest could not
support a complex, sophisticated society.
A 15-mile-square region at the headwaters of the Xingu River contains at
least 19 villages that are sited at regular intervals and share the same
circular design. The villages are connected by a system of broad,
parallel highways, Florida researchers reported in yesterday's issue of
Science.
The Xinguano people who occupied the area not only built the complex
towns but also dramatically altered the forest to meet their needs,
clearing large areas to plant orchards and cassava while preserving
other areas as a source of wood, medicine and animals.
Researchers have theorized for 10 to 20 years that such societies were
possible in Amazonia, said archaeologist Jim Petersen of the University
of Vermont, "but this is the first proof."
The new findings are a crucial part of "a growing body of evidence that
Amazonia could support reasonably large villages and complex societies,"
added archaeologist Robert Carneiro of the American Museum of Natural
History in New York.
The region today is composed primarily of small villages with
populations of fewer than 150 people, each of which is independent of
other settlements.
Before the current work, most of the Xinguano remaining in the region
were not even aware of the accomplishments of their ancestors before the
population was decimated by diseases brought by the invading Spanish in
the 16th century, said archaeologist Michael Heckenberger of the
University of Florida, who led the research.
Current attitudes about the region were shaped nearly 50 years ago by
researchers such as archaeologist Betty Meggers of the Smithsonian
Institution's National Museum of Natural History, whose research led her
to conclude that the Amazon basin was a "counterfeit paradise."
Despite the seeming abundance of plants and wildlife in the rain forest,
she said, the soil in the region is so poor that it could not support
the intensive agriculture necessary for the establishment of large
communities.
Little evidence has been collected to refute that idea, Petersen said,
largely because the Amazon area — roughly the size of the United
States — is one of the "last poorly known archaeological regions on
the face of the Earth."
Heckenberger estimates that more than 50 percent of the forest in the
region was cut down and replaced with fruit orchards and fields of
cassava, which grows better in the poor soil than most other crops.
He speculates that the Xinguano got about 80 percent of their calories
from the cassava, which is still prepared today in much the same fashion
as it was in the pre-Columbian era. The remainder of the diet was
composed primarily of fruit and fish.
The 19 villages, occupied between roughly A.D. 800 and A.D. 1600, were
arranged in two large clusters, each supporting populations of 2,500 to
5,000 people. Residential areas in the villages were dispersed in a
large circle around an empty hub, which probably was ceremonial,
Heckenberger said.
The individual villages were about 1-½ to 2 miles apart, connected by
straight roadways that were as much as 150 feet wide, some with high
mounds or "curbs" along their edges. The team also found excavated
ditches in and around the ancient settlements, bridges, artificial river
obstructions and ponds, raised causeways, canals and other structures,
many of which are in use today.
"They are organized in a way that suggests a sophisticated knowledge of
mathematics, astronomy and other sciences," Heckenberger said. "It's not
earth-shattering compared to what was going on in the rest of the world
at the same time, but nobody expected it in the Amazon."

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company






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