Is There An Ancient Civilisation Buried Under The Amazon?

Of course there was.  Better yet it surely numbered in the millions and potentially could have numbered in the tens of millions.  The reason i make that argument is that the agricultural protocol used terra preta soils which held nutrients in a sustainable growth cycle.  With that a mere garden plot of perhaps an acre easily supplied a family with ample food.  Cassava and Maize were used as staples but a range of other plants made up the diet.

That been the case a square mile could support 640 families or 2500 people.  That is a natural town consisting of a dozen natural villages.    A thousand square miles gives us 2,500,000 people.  That is an area a mere forty by twenty five miles of land.  All this can even be managed by a single big man.

The Amazon is so large that hundreds of these zones were possible.  We presently know of many areas although a hard count has not been truly completed.  What i am showing though is the huge human density possible using stone age knowledge and no more..

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Is There An Ancient Civilisation Buried Under The Amazon?

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/ancient-civilisation-buried-under-amazon-155419672.html

The Amazon rainforest is home to numerous species of animal and insect - but was it also once home to an ancient civilisation that is now buried beneath the trees?

The answer to that is a ‘quite possibly’ - and the reason for this is the discovery of giant geoglyphs, that are only now coming to light in the wake of deforestation.

Geoglyphs are giant, intricate shapes that have been arranged using the landscape or carved into the earth itself - with some of the most famous being the Nazca Lines in Peru.

And as vast swathes of the Amazon in Brazil were cleared, some 210 geoglyphs in 200 different site were discovered.

These meticulously-arranged shapes often span hundreds of feet and form mystical designs and patterns - and no one knows for certain what exactly they signify or what purpose they served.

Complex societies: These geoglyphs in the Amazon suggest the area was once inhabited by thousands of people (Wikipedia)

From the air, researchers have been able to observe the designs more clearly and describe what they believe to be giant avenues, irrigation canals and fences for livestock - evidence of a complex society, rather than a small group of hunter-gatherers.

If these geoglyphs were in fact used as transport and for providing food and water then it puts paid to the traditional thinking that there were no advanced civilisations in the Amazon region before settlers arrived from Spain and Portugal in the 15th century.

In fact, archaeologist Denise Schaan, from the Federal University of Pará in Brazil told the New York Times that radiocarbon testing on pottery discovered among the excavations indicated that they were built 1,000 to 2,000 years ago - and may even have been rebuilt several times during that period.

This evidence would also suggest that rather than the Amazon simply being acres of untouched woodland, barely inhabited by people, the area may in fact have been home to THOUSANDS across dozens of towns.

Researchers estimate that the population was as high as 70,000 in some of the archeological sites already examined.

So does the Amazon sit above evidence of a long-lost civilisation that existed before America was discovered by Columbus?