The lost civilisations of the Amazon

Posted On: Apr 23rd, 2016 at 12:26

Brazil
One of the little publicised aspects of South American archaeology is the idea that very large civilisations had already previously existed and were gone long before Europeans arrived and decimated the indigenous populations, mostly through foreign diseases with which the natives had no natural defence.
We are all familiar with the Nazca lines in Peru, the Inca Empire that stretched from Ecuador to Chile and further inland, the countless civilisations stretched along the entire Peruvian coastline, and many others, but very little is known about the Brazilian cultures that have come to light in recent years.
I was extremely fortunate, and brave I might add, to have spent the best part of a year in South America, 90% of that time in Peru, and I witnessed first hand many of the ancient cities and sites in that area – the Nazca, Inca, Wari, Moche, to name a very few. But in Brazil deforestation has uncovered massive earthworks that have only been seen previously in North America. The forest of the Amazon, if left to its own devices, will quickly swallow any traces of ancient civilisations. Only deforestation has uncovered these traces, and it is more than likely that many such places still exist under the forest canopy. The only real way to uncover these unknown civilisations is to map the entire Amazon using Lidar, but due to the massive size of the Amazon that could take many decades of continuous flyovers. I sincerely hope, however, that we will learn a lot more about South American civilisations, for it is my belief that the south was populated long before the north.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/is-there-an-ancient-civilisation-buried-under-the-155419057.html