16 February, 2015

Evidence of ancient Amazonian civilization deep under the canopy of the rainforest is hoping to be revealed under a new initiative by international scientific agencies. Questions will be raised on how the ancient populations impacted the rainforest thousands of years ago.

A project grant of 1.7m-euro (£1.25m; $1.9m) from the European Research Council is backing the endeavor of a UK-led, international research team. They will be employing drones and laser instruments to detect hidden geoglyphs and evidence of ancient communities below canopy-level.

The unusual earthworks, which include square, straight, and ring-like ditches, were first uncovered in 1999, after large areas of forest were cleared for cattle grazing. Since then, hundreds of the earthen foundations have been found in a region more than 150 miles across, covering northern Bolivia and Brazil’s Amazonas state.

BBC News reports the aim of the project is to discover the “scale and activities of populations living in the late pre-Columbian period (the last 3,000 years before the Europeans arrived in the 1490s).”

The international team will be investigating the nature of the geometric earthen shapes, and looking to establish whether the sites demonstrate an ancient collective behavior.

Dr. Jose Iriarte of Exeter University, UK tells BBC News, "While some researchers think that Amazonia was inhabited by small bands of hunter-gatherers and shifting cultivators who had a minimal impact on the environment, and that the forest we see today is pristine and untouched for thousands of years - mounting evidence is showing this may not be the case.”

"This evidence suggests that Amazonia may have been inhabited by large, numerous, complex and hierarchical societies that had a major impact on the environment; what we call the 'cultural parkland hypothesis'," he continues.

Until recently this type of search for vegetation-shrouded earthworks would have proven near impossible for researchers. Drones and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology make these investigations possible today. LiDAR was developed in the 1960s to analyze oceans and ice in the Arctic, but has been employed since in topography, geology and mapping.

SNIP