Washington Post: Was Amazonia home to ancient civilizations?
An idea that ancient history of a grand sort is buried in the Amazon’s soggy soil, one that has bobbed up and down over the years (see, at bottom of this post, the source of the illus), rose to the surface again this week. The Washington Post‘s Juan Forero, filing from Peru, reports on the persistent group of maverick archeologists pretty sure that in millenniums past, the seemingly inhospitable rain forest was home to thriving, complex societies.
It’s a compelling story. Properly, Forero allows skeptics of the idea a fairly extensive riposte. But his language makes it clear he’s pretty much sold on the idea that towns and even cities spread through the forest long before Columbus sailed. He lists not only teams from Brazil and other nations of the region, but more from American, German, and Finish archeologists who assert that complex canal system, widely-spread agricultural operations, moats, causeways, and other centrally-organized societies once thrived, but built mainly with perishable wood rather than monumental stone, where now only new settlers or traditional hunter-gatherer groups eke by.
One hopes it’s true while suspecting that Werner Herzog has it right, the Amazon is a devourer of people – a place for dragging steam ships up river or drifting madly down them in search of conquest or natural resources, but not for self-contained civilizations barely out of the stone age.
Pic source Xenophilia.
- Charlie Petit
