Vast ‘lost cities’ with pyramids uncovered in Amazon jungle
Laser technology strips away rainforest to reveal centuries-old sophisticated urban settlements
RESEARCHERS have revealed the massive scale of “lost cities” in the Amazon rainforest and uncovered fresh details about the lives of the people who lived there.
The existence of centuries-old settlements constructed by the Casarabe tribe who inhabited what is now Bolivia was already well-known.
But the extent of the sites had not previously been realised, and details of how the tribe lived was shrouded in mystery.
The veil has been lifted thanks to an aerial survey using technology known as Lidar, which uses a pulse from a laser to collect measurements as well as creating maps and 3D models.
About half of the 26 sites surveyed are new discoveries.
Researchers were stunned by the scale of the settlements, which included pyramids.
The survey also uncovered a surprising level of sophisticated urbanisation including a road network and reservoirs, indicating that the Casarabe were more than hunter-gatherers. The tribe lived in the Llanos de Mojos region of the Amazon basin between 500AD and 1400.
The research suggests that explorers hunting for El Dorado may not have been wasting their time.
It was a search that cost British adventurer Col Percy Fawcett his life when he ventured into the rainforest in 1925, never to return.
But Lidar technology has enabled scientists to strip away the trees and see what lies below.
They examined six different areas. The smallest was four square miles and the largest 32.
Flying in a helicopter 650ft above the Bolivian Amazon, researchers were able to “digitally deforest” the area and find vast urban settlements that were abandoned 600 years ago.
Landivar and Cotoca were known to exist, but little was known about them.
Researchers found evidence of canals, roads radiating out from an urban centre, 65ft-high urban pyramids and terraces.
There also appear to have been ceremonial buildings and defensive fortifications including a moat and ramparts.
Having used mud for construction, far less is known about the Casarabe than the Maya who built with limestone.
The discovery of major cities and the satellite settlements has confounded the belief that the Amazon was scarcely populated when Europeans arrived.
“It’s a myth that was created by Europeans who really spoke of a jungle, and vast regions untouched by humans,” Heiko Prümers, of the German Archaeological Institute and an author of the study, told Smithsonian magazine.
“So, a lot of people didn’t want to see that there were archaeological sites here that merit exploration.”
Why the Casarabe disappeared from the region is a matter of conjecture, with any oral history having been wiped out by contact with Europeans and smallpox.
The discovery of reservoirs has led Mr Prümers to suggest they could have been driven away by water shortages.