The authors of the study discovered a large ancient settlement with an area of 5,315 square kilometers.
A team of scientists in the 6.7 million square kilometer Amazon rainforest has discovered a long-lost city. This was reported by Science Alert.
In particular, with the help of LIDAR, a technology for obtaining and processing information about distant objects using active optical systems, an ancient settlement with an area of 5,315 square kilometers was found.
The study’s lead author, remote sensing scientist Vinicius Peripato of Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research, said the latest look at the terrain beneath the Amazon rainforest shows signs of human activity. before the Columbian.
According to the publication, in just one study, the team identified 24 previously unrecognized disturbances on the ground, at the same time, the shape and location of some of these structures clearly indicate the architectural origin.
Scientists believe they have found a fortified settlement in the southern Amazon, which includes defensive and ceremonial sites, crowned mountains and megalithic structures in the Guiana Shield, as well as riverine sites in the floodplains of central Amazonia.
Now, according to researchers, there is a village in the southern Amazon that was once home to thousands of people. In fact, scientists have discovered evidence of a market square connected by a network of roads, and this network easily rivals the roads of classical Europe.
In the southwestern Amazon, scientists have also discovered amazing geometric motifs made of soil, located far from any visible roads.
Experts estimate that there were once anywhere from 10,000 to 24,000 buildings here, which may still be hidden under layers of leaves, sediment and forest growth.
In addition, Peripato and colleagues measured the prevalence and abundance of 79 species of domesticated trees in nearly 1,700 forest plots. It turned out that less than half of them were distributed near the sites of ancient settlements. Overall, the occurrence or abundance of 53 of the 79 species was somehow related to past human dispersal.
It was previously reported that a PhD candidate in plate tectonics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and his colleagues discovered an ancient megaplate that existed on Earth about 160 million years ago.