There are few places left on Earth where nature remains untouched. One of them is the Amazon. In its vast territory of 6.7 million square kilometers, every patch of soil, every leaf, every body of water paints a picture of untamed wilderness. Here, beneath the dense jungle, scientists are increasingly finding clear evidence of ancient human activity.
A team from the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil announced a major discovery. The research was led by remote sensing expert Vinicius Peripato. Using LiDAR technology, the team discovered thousands of structures across 5,315 square kilometers tied to pre-Columbian communities.
LiDAR is a remote-sensing system that fires synchronized laser pulses from an aircraft. That lets researchers penetrate the canopy and map features hidden beneath the vegetation.
About 24,000 buildings still hiding under the Amazon forest
LiDAR has again proven its effectiveness at scanning deep layers of tropical vegetation. Finding signs of pre-Columbian activity beneath the jungle is not entirely surprising. What is shocking is the scale of the discoveries, ScienceAlert reported.
In a single study, the team identified roughly a thousand features in southern Amazonia that indicate a fortified settlement, defensive works, and ceremonial buildings. Using LiDAR, researchers also observed “crowned mountains and megalithic structures on the Guiana Shield, as well as riverine objects in the floodplains of central Amazonia.”
Examples of LiDAR mapping suggesting the existence of structures beneath the Amazon.
In a region where tens of thousands of people lived in pre-Columbian times, researchers found signs of a city with a developed road network that could be comparable to roads in present-day Europe. In the southwest, scientists also noticed strange geometric structures set far from the main roads.
After analyzing the findings, researchers estimate there are between 10,000 and 24,000 unknown structures still hidden beneath the Amazon. This suggests more than 90 percent of the region’s human history remains to be uncovered.
Traces of these ancient societies may still be preserved in the jungle. During the study, the team measured the prevalence and abundance of 79 species of domesticated trees across nearly 1,700 forest plots, including several plots near open earthen mounds. Almost half of these domesticated species were found close to ancient settlements, and the researchers suggested many of the trees may have been grown in managed areas that produced generous harvests of fruit and nuts.
The results of the study were published in the journal Science.
