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Ancient Earthworks in Amazon

Ancient Amazonian People Built Massive Circular Structures Before the Rainforest Existed

Two mysteries for the price of one: were some parts of the Amazon rainforests actually grassy plains just a few thousand years ago, and why (and how) were the ancient people of that area building massive circular earthworks? Environmental scientist John Francis Carson and his colleagues are trying to find the answers:

A series of square, straight and ringlike ditches scattered throughout the Bolivian and Brazilian Amazon were there before the rainforest existed, a new study finds.

…Since the 1980s, deforestation has revealed massive earthworks in the form of ditches up to 16 feet (5 meters) deep, and often just as wide… These human-made structures remain a mystery: They may have been used for defense, drainage, or perhaps ceremonial or religious reasons.

Carson and his colleagues wanted to explore the question of whether early Amazonians had a major impact on the forest. They focused on the Amazon of northeastern Bolivia, where they had sediment cores from two lakes nearby major earthworks sites. These sediment cores hold ancient pollen grains and charcoal from long-ago fires, and can hint at the climate and ecosystem that existed when the sediment was laid down as far back as 6,000 years ago.

An examination of the two cores — one from the large lake, Laguna Oricore, and one from the smaller lake, Laguna Granja — revealed a surprise: The very oldest sediments didn’t come from a rainforest ecosystem at all. In fact, the Bolivian Amazon before about 2,000 to 3,000 years ago looked more like the savannas of Africa than today’s jungle environment.

Link: Mysterious Earthen Rings Predate Amazon Rainforest

Paper (Abstract):Environmental impact of geometric earthwork construction in pre-Columbian Amazonia

Editor
  1. humans at fault
    So, since we are normally blaming humans for pretty much everything – did these old civilizations cause the catastrophic forestation of the Amazon basin?

    1. The article has no
      The article has no information on the extent of the “savannah.” It is safe to assume though that a forest ecosystem as complex as that of modern Amazonia’s did not spring up within the last 6,000 years, and also that it required a huge area of land to evolve as it did, so the effect of human settlement on Amazonia was most likely episodic and not of huge extent. We already knew of regions of “biochar” in Amazonia. I suppose the next question will be – “what was the extent?” The article doesn’t know.
      My son, who is getting a degree in Geographical Information Systems, says that LIDAR will give us a clearer picture one day.

  2. Amazon rainforest only 2,000 years old
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2685049/Amazonian-rain-forest-just-2-000-years-old-previously-SAVANNAH-tended-farmers-researchers-find.html

    In a short article two years ago I proposed that the Amazon rain forest could only be a few thousand years old and not 55 million years as was currently believed.

    See here: http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2012/10/28/the-amazon-rainforest/
    Or my web…. http://www.gks.uk.com/Sahara_Desert_Amazon/

    These latest finding are a major step towards supporting my stance. I see future research ultimately confirming this.

    I arrived at the above conclusion by researching my theory which proposes that the Sahara & Arabian deserts are of very recent extraterrestrial origin.
    http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2010/arch10/100408sahara.htm
    http://www.gks.uk.com/Sahara_Desert_Chaos/

    I reasoned if the Sahara desert didn’t exist 3-4,000 years ago, it couldn’t have sustained the Amazon rainforest with its nutrient rich dust which blows across the Atlantic.

    Gary Gilligan (catastrophist)
    http://www.gks.uk.com/

    1. Are you therefore alleging
      Are you therefore alleging that the howler monkey, for instance, which exclusively depends on a complex rainforest ecosystem is only a “few thousand years” evolved?

  3. big forests
    it is not unheard of that cultures without power tools flatten big forests,
    so why could those people not have done that, like the europeans did in the middle ages?

    And when the culture leaves for some reason, the forest comes back.

    1. That is the argument being
      That is the argument being implied by certain factions intent on turning Amazonia into a giant cattle farm and strip mine. The extent of clearing available to modern technology would dwarf what ancient cultures were capable of. It is quite possible to wipe out whole rainforest dependent species with our modern technic.

      1. speed
        We can do it more quickly, but not more thoroughly. The “ancients” we are talking about did this in a few hundred years in most of Europe.

        Now it is of course true that the climates of Europe and of South America are different, and that the Europeans did grow back some tree-farms which they now think of as forests. But on the other hand, this growing back is relatively recent, I think it started in the late 1800s or so.

        It is also true that we don’t have good climate records for Europe before this happened, so the impact on the climate is unknown, for that particular clearing.

  4. Col. Fawcett and the Amazon
    Last night I turned on the TV and was surprised to hear the name of Madame Blavatsky being mentioned. Turns out it was a PBS show on the explorer Col. Fawcett, who disappeared while searching for a fabled lost city in the Amazon. A surprisingly interesting documentary, which nearly vindicates Fawcett by means of new research about these ancient earthworks in the Amazonian jungle. I found it online, here:

    http://m.video.pbs.org/video/1889269948/

    1. What happened to European
      What happened to European forests was a catastrophe. What “came back” was nothing like what had existed before in complexity and ability to withstand stressors. The rain forests that “come back” after a total wipeout would just be a land of trees and other plant life. Many, many species would be gone forever, and the forests would lack the former dynamic. They might look green, but they would not begin to compare to what they had been. We are talking here about a swift clearing that leaves no pockets of potential recharge, and it would require very large pockets indeed. As it is, the planet is losing thousands of species per year because of rapid rain forest clearing.

    2. One of my favorite outre’
      One of my favorite outre’ books is “Cancer Planet Mission” now out of print but available as a .pdf online. It posits via various tellers of tales that there are actually some largish pyramids deep within Amazonia and that galactic roamers from a planet called Itibi-Ra had set up outposts in Amazonia to study exotic fruits for supplying their almost exclusively fruitarian diet. The book is very convincingly written though it could just be an artful ruse. I love it no matter what the truth actually may be. The Itibi-Raians have to be the coolest ET race you have ever heard of.

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