This is a continuation of many findings in this direction. It's wonderful to imagine the many societies humans have created, and sad that we'll be able to learn so little about them.
I've always been confused by the idea that we know all civilisation that has happened on earth, human or otherwise. Written record doesn't go back very far at all, and even archeological evidence is lacking.
Its believed that homo sapiens have been around for at least 300,000 years and yet we think almost all of that was entirely without civilization.
We find fossil records of dinosaurs but we have little to no evidence of what would have been before them, presumably there was an extinction event prior to them as well.
It seems foolish to think we are the latest incarnation of the only chain of civilization that had ever happened on Earth.
There’s an incredible story about Orellana, who captained the first journey down the Amazon River in the 1500’s with Gaspar de Carvajal taking notes. They described cities of hundreds of thousands of people, and sailing for days going through city after city.
Decades later people tried to repeat the journey and didn’t find major cities, ultimately calling Carvajal a liar. The reality was everyone died due to new diseases. It’s hard to imagine the impact disease had on South America in particular
The myth of the 'pristine, untouched Amazon' was always a European trope. Lidar is proving that ancient civilizations were sophisticated ecosystem engineers, shaping the rainforest for centuries without destroying it.
Finding hundreds of previously unknown earthworks is a major archaeological result. Extrapolating from them to millions of inhabitants is where I would slow down...
I recommend the book 1491 by Charles C. Mann to those of you who find this interesting. I loved it!
From wikipedia:
> The book presents recent research findings from different fields which suggest human populations in the Western Hemisphere—that is, the Indigenous peoples of the Americas—were more numerous, had arrived earlier, were more sophisticated culturally, and controlled and shaped the natural landscape to a greater extent than scholars had previously thought.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 88.4 ms ] threadThis is a continuation of many findings in this direction. It's wonderful to imagine the many societies humans have created, and sad that we'll be able to learn so little about them.
Its believed that homo sapiens have been around for at least 300,000 years and yet we think almost all of that was entirely without civilization.
We find fossil records of dinosaurs but we have little to no evidence of what would have been before them, presumably there was an extinction event prior to them as well.
It seems foolish to think we are the latest incarnation of the only chain of civilization that had ever happened on Earth.
Decades later people tried to repeat the journey and didn’t find major cities, ultimately calling Carvajal a liar. The reality was everyone died due to new diseases. It’s hard to imagine the impact disease had on South America in particular
https://www.science.org/content/article/unearth-their-past-a...
From wikipedia: > The book presents recent research findings from different fields which suggest human populations in the Western Hemisphere—that is, the Indigenous peoples of the Americas—were more numerous, had arrived earlier, were more sophisticated culturally, and controlled and shaped the natural landscape to a greater extent than scholars had previously thought.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A...