Scientists have actually discovered a 2500-year-old network of pre-Hispanic metropolitan centers in the Upper Amazon, including comprehensive platforms, plazas, and roadways. This discovery, which parallels Maya metropolitan systems, highlights the Amazons abundant cultural and ecological legacy, urging a reevaluation of our understanding of Amazonian history.A team of scientists has actually discovered what appears to be a lost valley of cities, a discovery that is nothing except incredible.A new study has revealed the discovery of a substantial network of pre-Hispanic city settlements in the upper Amazon. These settlements are distinguished by their built plazas and platforms and are interconnected by broad, straight roads.The research, based on more than 20 years of interdisciplinary research study, recommends that this initial 2500-year-old society makes up the earliest and biggest low-density agrarian urbanism documented in the Amazon hence far. Such substantial early development in the Upper Amazon resembles comparable Maya city systems in Central America. A growing body of research study has started to highlight the scope and scale of pre-Hispanic occupation of the Amazon, evidence for massive urbanism has remained elusive.Unique Urbanism in Amazonian EcuadorStéphen Rostain and associates present proof for an agrarian-based civilization that started more than 2500 years back in the Upano Valley of Amazonian Ecuador, an area in the eastern foothills of the Andes. Based on more than 20 years of interdisciplinary research that consisted of fieldwork and light detection and ranging (LIDAR) mapping, Rostain et al. describe urbanism at a scale never before recorded in Amazonia, consisting of more than 6000 anthropogenic rectangle-shaped earthen platforms and plaza structures linked by walkways and roads and surrounded by expansive agricultural landscapes and river drainages within the 300 square kilometer study area.The authors recognized at least 15 unique settlement websites of different sizes based on clusters of structures. However, according to Rostain et al., the most notable elements of this developed environment are the complex and substantial regional-scale roadway network connecting city centers and the surrounding hinterland.Archaeological Evidence and Cultural SignificanceArchaeological excavations show that the building and construction and occupation of the platforms and roads took place in between ~ 500 BCE and 300 to 600 CE and was performed by groups from the Kilamope and later Upano cultures. Rostain et al. note that the Upano sites are different from other monumental websites found in Amazonia, which are more recent and less substantial.” Such a discovery is another vibrant example of the underestimation of Amazonias twofold heritage: environmental but likewise cultural, and therefore Indigenous,” write Rostain et al. “… we think that it is important to thoroughly revise our preconceptions of the Amazonian world and, in doing so, to reinterpret contexts and concepts in the needed light of a participatory and inclusive science.” Reference: “Two thousand years of garden urbanism in the Upper Amazon” by Stéphen Rostain, Antoine Dorison, Geoffroy de Saulieu, Heiko Prümers, Jean-Luc Le Pennec, Fernando Mejía Mejía, Ana Maritza Freire, Jaime R. Pagán-Jiménez and Philippe Descola, 11 January 2024, Science.DOI: 10.1126/ science.adi6317.
