[HN Gopher] Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built...
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Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago
(2024)
Author : indus
Score : 146 points
Date : 2025-01-03 06:36 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| ge96 wrote:
| Everytime I see these I think of lost gold.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Every time i see these I think about Spanish explorers who
| brought small pox over and caused these cities to collapse,
| only to return to Spain telling stories of jungle cities. Only
| to have the fleets turn up to dense jungle years later and fine
| nothing.
|
| But yeah, I also think about lost treasure and Indian Jones a
| lot with these stories.
| desdenova wrote:
| Some of those ancient cities disappeared a lot earlier than
| Spain even existed, though.
|
| People likely abandoned them for some unknown reason and
| moved to other locations, where they'd eventually get wiped
| out by the Spanish.
| brabel wrote:
| Exactly, and likely some of these cities were destroyed by
| rival kingdoms we don't even know existed, if written
| history in other regions is anything to go by.
| coffeecantcode wrote:
| There's proven to be massive amounts of rare earth metals
| used by the indigenous populations in that area at that time,
| so it's only natural to imagine that finding "lost" or
| abandoned cities from around that time has the potential to
| uncover large amounts of rare metals as well, potentially
| even cities that explain the stories told of cities filled
| with gold. The original comment didn't need a history lesson
| on the Spanish conquests.
|
| Replies like yours belong on Reddit, what an insufferable
| outlook on life and history.
| coffeecantcode wrote:
| I woke up cranky
| tenpies wrote:
| I think you are referencing _La aventura del Amazonas_ by
| Dominican monk Gaspar de Carvajal.
|
| He was one of the survivors of the first European expedition
| _through_ the Amazon and provides the only account we have of
| something resembling the pre-European Amazon. He talks about
| large cities with tall structures, roadworks, and very
| elaborate societies - nothing compared to our common notion
| of the Amazonian people.
|
| His account was largely dismissed because it was never
| replicated, but those who believe it to be accurate theorize
| that this first Expedition unintentionally caused a
| population collapse by introducing European diseases. You can
| imagine that by the time other expeditions were organized, it
| was a completely different place and the jungle would have
| easily overgrown any abandoned cities.
|
| Good starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspar_de_
| Carvajal#The_Relacio...
| trymas wrote:
| Needs a date in the title - this was posted a number of times
| here when it was published.
| trkaky wrote:
| http://benedante.blogspot.com/2024/01/kunguints-sangay-and-w...
| ricardobeat wrote:
| The previous common-sense belief was that the Amazon was never
| densely populated and had always been exactly like it is today,
| a dense forest with primitive tribes scattered hundreds of km
| apart.
|
| Twenty years ago, brazilian researchers who would mention this
| theory were considered a bit lunatic, at the "elvis isn't dead"
| or "the US reads all the world's email" level of conspiracy
| theories.
|
| So playing down these discoveries with discussions of urban
| density or cities vs villages is pointless, the important
| finding is that there was some form of civilization there at
| all.
| tempodox wrote:
| Agreed, but:
|
| > "the US reads all the world's email" level of conspiracy
| theories
|
| Never say never.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Perhaps the parent comment is alluding to Elvis actually
| being not dead
| lazide wrote:
| He just went home (/s)
| rockskon wrote:
| Read, parse for keywords to take action against - what's the
| difference?
| ricardobeat wrote:
| The article makes its main point to dispute the "City"
| characterization and how this is "overblown".
|
| I can only assume trkaky posted in the same spirit of
| discrediting the news, which I find worth "taking action"
| against. It might be old news for people in the field, and
| not reported faithfully (as usual), but what's the purpose
| of raining down on one of the most interesting
| archeological discoveries in the Americas?
| nico wrote:
| > Twenty years ago, brazilian researchers who would mention
| this theory were considered a bit lunatic
|
| You are right. However, not only Brazilian researchers, an
| not just 20 years ago
|
| Check out the movie "The Lost City of Z" or the story of
| Percy Fawcett
| physicles wrote:
| Also, the amazing story of Helena Valero, kidnapped by an
| Amazon tribe, survived just on her wits, and escaped years
| later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41758857
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| How do the LIDARs work for this kind of thing? I always imagined
| that the light used wouldn't be able to penetrate objects that
| are opaque in the visible light spectrum.
| defrost wrote:
| If sunlight can reach the forest floor then so can LIDAR.
|
| An airframe with a LIDAR device scatter shots a medium angle
| "spotlight" of pulses at high frequency downwards within an arc
| area of angles (straight down, a bit to the left, a bit to the
| right, a bit forward, etc.)
|
| Of the tens of thousands of 'RAW' data points many reflect from
| top canopy leaf cover, many penetrate further, a lesser number
| reach the ground.
|
| _All_ the raw points are pipeline processed and the floor() of
| penetration is extracted from the fuzzy cloud that represents
| the canopy as a whole.
|
| Ancient banks, levels, roads, et al show up where not eroded as
| per the image in the article.
| roughly wrote:
| Even when eroded, the presence of straight lines in the
| eroded remains has typically been used to identify human-made
| structures.
| sampo wrote:
| Here is a fisheye photo from the bottom of a rainforest. As you
| can see, some spots of sky are visible from the bottom. When
| you fly above the forest and LIDAR is looking down, similarly
| at some spots the LIDAR laser beams are able to hit all the way
| to the bottom at some spots through the canopy.
|
| It's not a big fraction, but some of the laser beams are
| hitting the ground, and after data processing you filter them
| out and they five you the ground topography profile.
|
| https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/972412/view/rainforest-ca...
|
| Here is a side view that shows how the point cloud profile can
| look like. This is not from a rainforest but some other forest.
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/LiDAR-point-cloud-profil...
| tempodox wrote:
| (Jan 2024)
| ryleyrandall22 wrote:
| The Book of Mormon has made this claim for years
| jmarchello wrote:
| Every time I see news about cities discovered in south america
| I look to see if the dates line up with the Nephite/Lamanite
| civilizations of the Book of Mormon (roughly 600 BC to 400 AD).
| This is the closest yet that I've seen. I'm eager to see what
| they discover in the coming years about their culture and
| government. Will we find traces of their Judge-based
| government? Signs that they worshiped Christ and practiced
| Jewish rituals? It will be interesting to watch this
| investigation unfold.
| krapp wrote:
| >Will we find traces of their Judge-based government? Signs
| that they worshiped Christ and practiced Jewish rituals?
|
| No.
| dmvdoug wrote:
| I began to read this thread just for the horror-show-train-
| wreck voyeurism of crazy. But your simple riposte made me
| laugh, so, gold star, you.
| neaden wrote:
| There is absolutely nothing being found here that is consistent
| with the Book of Mormon besides very general things like people
| lived there.
| ryleyrandall22 wrote:
| Correct. But for a long time people claimed no body even
| lived there.
|
| But I agree believing in a book like the Book of Mormon
| because of some random article would be a bad idea
| p_j_w wrote:
| That there were cities on the American continent 2500 years
| ago? Is this supposed to vindicate the Book of Mormon as
| somehow being truthful?
| ryleyrandall22 wrote:
| No. Believing in a religious text because of some
| archeological evidence would be like doing math through
| prayer.
|
| But I do find it at least a bit ironic that one of the
| critiques of the book I have seen most commonly has been "If
| there were so many people, where were all the cities?"
| holmesworcester wrote:
| My favorite discovery about Amazon civilization is that the
| incidence of human-edible fruit trees is much higher in any area
| near navigable water. They were modifying the forest to be more
| supportive of humans.
| e40 wrote:
| Where did you read this? I've read in multiple places that the
| jungle there is quite inhospitable to humans because there is
| little easily accessible food. The source that comes to mind is
| the book The Lost City of Z.
| dbspin wrote:
| There's now a consensus of evidence that large areas of the
| Amazon were planted and cultivated. Bear in mind this an
| enormous area, and multiple civilisations would have been
| active simultaneously over thousands of years.
|
| Two thousand years of garden urbanism in the Upper Amazon
| https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.adi6317
|
| Early Holocene crop cultivation and landscape modification in
| Amazonia
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2162-7.epdf
| hosh wrote:
| That didn't just happen in the Amazon. The Pacific Northwest
| had something like that. My understanding is that the Eastern
| American forests were curated like that too, before it was cut
| down.
|
| I have heard of an oasis in North Africa that was curated this
| way, and it still survived despite being abandoned by humans.
|
| The modern version of this is called a perennial food forest.
| morkalork wrote:
| It happens unintentionally too, if you've ever been to a
| state park in North America and seen an apple tree off of a
| trail, it's because someone once threw away an apple core.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| Yes, much of early cultivation is theorized to have looked
| like this, particularly before sedentary agriculture. If
| you have a fairly stable seasonal migration pattern plants
| you eat or use will naturally "follow" you around and will
| tend towards forms that make them more attractive to human
| attention.
| hosh wrote:
| I think that minimizes the fact that people were
| deliberately curating and designing perennial food
| forests, historically and contemporarily. Our ancestors
| may not have the scientific knowledge we have now, but
| they were just as smart as we are.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > I think that minimizes the fact that people were
| deliberately curating and designing perennial food
| forests, historically and contemporarily.
|
| I don't see this minimization (after all, we currently do
| this unintentionally today and nobody sees this as lack
| of intelligence and I certainly hope I never implied that
| people in the past were in any way less capable than
| ourselves) but I do affirm that people were just as
| capable of understanding the causes and effects of plant
| reproduction as they are today.
|
| I'm just freely speculating on how to find the most
| minimal path to explanation and it's easier to explain
| the differences in the rise of civilization in the middle
| east vs the new world with other factors rather than
| something cultural or genetic or otherwise abstractly
| geographically-bound factors. And besides, I _like_ the
| idea that people in the past wouldn 't have just sat
| around ruminating how to maximize crop yields but had
| more fruitful activities to attend to. I don't celebrate
| the egyptian engineer who figured out how to haul a
| multi-ton brick up a high slope, I _mourn_ for him (or
| her)!
|
| EDIT: softened wording a bit
| hosh wrote:
| I've been on a quest to find out what went wrong with
| modernity. Looking through the history, I found out the
| Renaissance was not what I thought it was. The history of
| the Silk Roads were not what I thought it was. And I
| haven't revisited the history of the industrial
| revolution, but it looks so far, that is where the
| obsession with maximizing productivity, gains, and work
| all come from. It is very likely when I look at it again,
| it is not what I thought it was either.
|
| The significance of perennial food forests is that it's a
| practice that comes from a very different world view than
| our normative one that came from the industrial
| revolution. Yet there's a tendency to evaluate something
| like a perennial food forest from the world view of
| maximizing productivity. Maybe we're talking past each
| other a bit -- I have not put a lot of thought into the
| difference in how civilizations arose in the old world vs
| the new world. The patterns of design for something like
| the perennial food forests in the Americas have shown up
| in the Old World as well.
|
| I haven't found Occam's Razor very effective in
| explanatory powers. Treating the minimum path as the
| floor is one thing; treating it as the most probable
| theory (and then making decisions based upon it) is
| something I have concluded for myself as folly. Just my
| personal opinion; I'm aware I don't hold a popular
| opinion.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > treating it as the most probable theory (and then
| making decisions based upon it) is something I have
| concluded for myself as folly.
|
| Sure, but your tools reasoning about the past are quite
| limited. Occam's Razor helps us identify where narrative
| elements are unnecessary for an explanation, and in that
| it's quite useful. For most of history we _must_ rely on
| Occam 's Razor to even construct any sort of probability
| model. After all what's easier to believe--acting like
| the historical record was fabricated with the intent of
| deceiving us, or acting like the people who wrote the
| historical records generally had rational reasons to do
| so? The basis for preferring the latter is inherently an
| application of Occam's Razor.
| hosh wrote:
| It can and humans (like birds) do disperse genetic
| material. However we are talking about deliberately curated
| food forests.
|
| The European forests, in contrast were not like that. I
| remember reading about accounts from settlers in North
| America noting the park like quality of some of the
| forests.
|
| As another example, here where I live in the Sonoran
| (Phoenix), there are a lot of chollas. Those have nasty
| barbed thorns, but they also produce fruits. There is
| another native plant that has sticky leaves and can be used
| to brush off the thorns so that the fruits can be
| harvested. I learned this from one of Brad Landcaster's
| videos on this; Landcaster said he learned it from one of
| the native elders. They would deliberately plant the plant
| with sticky leaves near chollas.
| WalterBright wrote:
| A slice of my property I leave to grow naturally. I threw
| out apple cores into it frequently, hoping one will sprout.
| They never did. I finally just bought an apple tree and
| planted it there, it now produces delicious apples once a
| year.
|
| A couple onions I threw there did sprout!
| zackmorris wrote:
| Permaculture is another word for it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture
|
| The city where I live in the PNW has had a huge influx of
| immigrants from red and blue states who either don't respect
| the dignity of nonhuman life or want to gentrify communities
| to their liking. It seems like the first thing they do when
| they get here is cut down the biggest tree(s) in their yard
| to live out their pioneer fantasies. I'd say we've lost
| around 25 trees 75 years or older in just my immediate
| neighborhood. Then they plant ornamental pears and similar
| that smell like rotten garbage/death/sex.
|
| Heaven forbid they plant a plumb, walnut or anything they
| have to (gasp) clean up after. Bumblebees, butterflies and
| small birds have all but disappeared compared to when we
| moved in around 2010.
|
| With housing prices going from $100,000 to $500,000 since
| 2000, while wages haven't even doubled, I'm starting to not
| recognize this place anymore. It's heartbreaking because it
| didn't have to be this way. It's not a supply and demand
| problem, it's a cultural issue. What we value as a society,
| what we prioritize, how we fund institutions for checks and
| balances against predatory private equity firms that can't be
| stopped by the private sector, etc.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > or want to gentrify communities to their liking.
|
| I think you've bent this word beyond breaking.
|
| > I'd say we've lost around 25 trees 75 years or older in
| just my immediate neighborhood.
|
| What kind of trees? Red Alder which are native to the area
| for example don't live much more than 70 years.
|
| > while wages haven't even doubled,
|
| Median household income in current dollars has more than
| doubled in Portland since 2000[1].
|
| > It's not a supply and demand problem
|
| Yes it is. Housing prices increase when demand increases.
| Portland has an arbitrary growth boundary around the city
| and a lot of restrictions on height.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/205988/median-
| household-...
| cco wrote:
| In Hell's Canyon Oregon, there were mining camps up and down
| it and you still see a ton of fruit trees dotting the canyon
| because of it. Many are intentional, by homes, rows etc, but
| sometimes you see the odd copse of fruit trees off by itself
| and well, that's probably where the outhouse as ;)
|
| Only about 100-150 years old, but given how well they've done
| over that time and how popular they are with the wildlife,
| I'd bet they stick around.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > They were modifying the forest to be more supportive of
| humans.
|
| My understanding is that the rainforest as we know it exists
| where it does _in part because_ humans spent such effort
| cultivating edible plants in the area. Many of the most edible
| crops are not native to the regions in which they now grow,
| there 's not much evidence of ancient-grown forest before
| ~5kya, and there's good evidence of burn-based plant and soil
| management.
| madihaa wrote:
| So amazing that we can see this without even excavating it all.
| globalise83 wrote:
| Amazing how many areas of humanities, physical sciences and
| informatics and engineering were required to achieve this result.
| Showcases the range and depth of human knowledge perfectly.
| nico wrote:
| Just finished watching "Ancient Apocalypse" on Netflix. They go
| over this kind of discovery
|
| It's quite speculative, but also really fascinating. Even if what
| they claim is not completely right, it definitely shows how the
| current accepted understanding of the history of the Americas
| needs an overhaul and a lot more research
|
| PS: if you like this stuff, also check out the movie "The Lost
| City of Z"
| e40 wrote:
| The Lost City of Z, the book, was fascinating. Highly
| recommended. Didn't see the movie.
| xdennis wrote:
| I don't know if you're aware, but Ancient Apocalypse is pseudo
| science.
| vdupras wrote:
| Yeah, I'm hesitant about this.
|
| One the one hand, experts pile up pretty hard on this series
| and on M. Hancock. Maybe deservedly, I don't know.
|
| But I'm still sour about COVID where experts piled up pretty
| hard on the lab leak theory. When early on, experts were
| telling us that _science_ said that masks were ineffective.
| They were adamant.
|
| Here, the very insistence of those experts, the aggressive
| tone of the wikipedia page give me an air of _deja vu_.
| whatwhaaaaat wrote:
| The reality of the modern world cannot be explained by the
| history we are told.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| ? How do you figure? The idea of "fully explaining" the
| modern world seems a ridiculous concept but it's not like
| we have alternatives to the concept of looking to the
| past in a methodical manner.
| vdupras wrote:
| You mean by the history we are told in the Ancient
| Apocalypse series? No, probably not.
|
| But that's the point! New information such as these
| discoveries in the Amazon show that the stories told by
| "mainstream archeology" can't explain the reality of the
| modern world either!
|
| Where does that leave us? I don't know, but curiosity
| should be encouraged.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| The slow movingness of Science with its method and peer
| reviewing definitely fights against new ideas becoming
| accepted overnight, but we do get there, and glomming
| onto personalities with unaccepted ideas will hurt your
| 'correctness' more than help it.
|
| I watched some of the first season and was actually
| already open to all the alt archaeology stuff with the
| precision arguments people make, but the more I looked
| the more clear it was just BS.
|
| I think the biggest thing about the old world people miss
| (and thus makes alt archeology so attractive) is the mass
| use of slaves and general lack of caring about human
| suffering.
|
| I couldn't believe Red Fort was built in 9 years in 1640,
| until I had that epiphany, for instance.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Fort
| mmooss wrote:
| > general lack of caring about human suffering
|
| You may need some evidence. For example, someone looking
| back on us might think that, because we accept the
| current level of suffering as normal.
|
| What is alt-arhaeology?
| pwillia7 wrote:
| All these people that think big archaeology is wrong
| because of gobekli Teppe and they now have a couple
| seasons of the Netflix show referenced in this thread
| nico wrote:
| I know it has that reputation. But besides people saying
| stuff like your comment, I haven't seen any specifics about
| exactly what's wrong
|
| Would you care to elaborate? Have you seen the show? Could
| you point to the things that are wrong and why?
|
| Genuinely curious and wanting to learn
| hoerensagen wrote:
| I think this video is good Ressource on the topic.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-iCIZQX9i1A
|
| Basically Hancock show lots of interesting and fascinating
| archaeological sites which is great especially since a lot
| of these are things that most viewers didn't know about
| before. But sadly he chooses to use these site only to
| present his theory for which he's doesn't have any actual
| evidence.
| nico wrote:
| Thank you for that video. Unfortunately the guy spends
| the first part of it just hating on Hancock, which I
| don't think is a good way to debunk stuff
|
| I was also hoping the guy would find whatever papers or
| publications were made by the scientists Hancock
| interviews throughout the series, but he's mainly just
| rebutting the concept of an ancient advanced civilization
| (which yes, is very speculative, and even Hancock says
| that himself in the series)
|
| Clearly the guy has a lot of detractors, his grand
| theories are speculative and they certainly have many
| holes
|
| But it also seems like even mainstream archaeology is
| also, to some degree, speculative (we can't really know
| exactly what happened in the past). And that some of the
| research that Hancock is supporting his theories on,
| might actually be right
|
| Anyway, thank you again. I will take Hancock's most
| grandiose claims with a grain of salt, but I'm also going
| to keep an open mind about alternative theories of how
| the Americas might have been first populated by humans
| (especially the Amazon)
| p_j_w wrote:
| > Even if what they claim is not completely right
|
| It seems even this is not the case and that the show is just
| completely wrong.
| nico wrote:
| The show seemed very convincing, not in the speculative
| theories about an ancient precursor civilization necessarily,
| but definitely in some of the findings they show
|
| Do you have any resources you could share that debunk the
| specific things they show? Like the rock paintings they dated
| to 10k years ago, or some of the other digs that were dated
| as 20-25k years old?
|
| Are you saying it is all made up? Or just some of it?
| mmooss wrote:
| > The show seemed very convincing
|
| On a tangent, isn't that a signal of inaccuracy? Accurate
| people - i.e., committed to be truthful and correct - are
| very careful and nuanced about what they claim, make
| weaknesses as clear as strengths, and are careful to _not_
| be too convincing, because that can distort their reader 's
| critical thinking.
|
| At least, that's the ideal. But why be especially
| convincing - why be more convincing than your empirical
| evidence?
| vdupras wrote:
| This is precisely what I'm looking for too. All critiques
| of Hancock I can find with my feeble googling skills seem
| to be focused on unimportant stuff such as encouraging uses
| of psychedelics and accusations of racism.
|
| But what's far, far more important, is debunking evidences
| like rock painting dating, geoglyphs dating. That thing on
| Rapa Nui about statues being more-than-half buried seemed
| really intriguing. The speculation he makes about why that
| might be so (spoiler alert: that famous lost civilization
| being there first) seemed interesting to me. Is there a
| specific debunking of that somewhere?
|
| I'd also be interested in specific debunking of his theory
| that incas didn't have the capabilities to do some of the
| rock walls they've made. You know, with heated rocks and
| all. That seemed interesting too.
| thinkyfish wrote:
| You should check out the Miniminuteman series on ancient
| apocalypse, its pretty interesting.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iCIZQX9i1A
| itronitron wrote:
| "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James Loewen
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200329225058/http://sundown.to...
| sampo wrote:
| > check out the movie "The Lost City of Z"
|
| And the 2005 Charles C. Mann book "1491: New Revelations of the
| Americas Before Columbus".
| nico wrote:
| Thank you. Looks like a fascinating read
|
| I remember seeing some discussions about it and related
| topics here on HN a few years ago
| roughly wrote:
| That book is really an incredible eye-opening read, I
| strongly recommend it.
|
| Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything spends quite a
| bit of time with complex societies in the Americas as well,
| and is certainly worth a read as well.
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