How the “lost cities” of the Amazon were finally found

This is the British explorer Percy Fawcett. He was last heard from here... deep in the Amazon rainforest in 1925. He was on his eighth expedition to the Amazon and had one goal: find the ruins of a

lost

city he called “Z.” . The idea was based on rumors that had circulated for centuries that there were once large

cities

, filled with people, deep in the Amazon. But Fawcett never

found

Z or any other city. And for decades after its disappearance, experts believed that this rainforest was simply too hostile and too remote to support

cities

. Until recently, when scientists started finding them.

These ditches and mounds are man-made. And they are all over the rainforest. Now, archaeologists believe they

finally

know the answer to an ancient mystery: Where are the

lost

cities of the Amazon? "Here was the capital of the Inca empire, Cusco." "Many massive and beautiful walls built by the ancient inhabitants centuries before the arrival of the Spanish, still stand..." In the 16th century, European colonizers arrived in Central and South America, bringing with them soldiers, diseases and plans to conquer her. They encountered many groups of indigenous people, some of whom had long since built large cities. Like Tenochtitlán,

found

ed by the Mexica around the year 1325 AD.

And Cusco, founded by the Incas around 1200 AD. The cities were built of stone and featured well-planned roads and neighborhoods. The Europeans took possession of both and, in the mid-16th century, rumors were heard of another city, where: "A great Lord... walks continually covered in gold dust." "And he removes it at night." Those rumors eventually became the legend of El Dorado, a city made of gold, hidden in the Amazon jungle. These impressive cities made a golden city seem plausible, so many Europeans set out in search of El Dorado. But they all failed. Most ended in famine, disease and death.

No one found a golden city, but they did record signs that it might exist. Spanish explorers claimed to have seen: “Cities that shone white.” "Large quantities of corn and oats." “A town of disproportionate size…” “and a chief with golden idols… and other riches.” “Very large towns, to such an extent that they were astonished.” Explorations continued for the next 200 years or so, but by the 19th century the legend of El Dorado had been dismissed as a myth. It was not until the early 20th century that these reports inspired a British explorer to revive the search. For two decades, Fawcett scoured the Amazon in search of remains of an ancient city, focusing on two areas.

The western Amazon, in Bolivia. And the south of the Amazon, in Brazil. But he couldn't find anything that early Europeans observed. He met indigenous people, but in his letters he described them as people who lived in small groups and simple villages. And he found no sign of stone ruins. This seemed to support what had become almost a consensus among experts at the time: that this rainforest was too inhospitable to support large, complex societies. Not to mention the cities. Modern research estimates that in Fawcett's time only a few hundred thousand people lived in the entire Amazon rainforest.

The most racist theories of the time maintained that these indigenous peoples were too unsophisticated to build cities. And others pointed to the Amazon soil, which seemed too infertile to support the necessary large-scale agriculture. But Fawcett was determined to prove that cities existed. And in his final letter to his wife, Fawcett assured her, writing: "You need not be afraid of any failure." He then abandoned his camp here and was never seen again. For decades to come, it was believed that the Amazon had always been relatively empty, but it turns out that Fawcett was looking in the right place for just the wrong thing.

One clue that Fawcett missed was in the 1960s, scientists discovered patches of extremely fertile soil that contained many more nutrients than usual. They called it terra preta, or black earth, and they found plenty of it in the Amazon, especially along the rivers. Later studies revealed that it was created by human waste or by intentional burning of the forest that adds nutrients to the soil. There was evidence that large-scale agriculture was possible in the Amazon. The next clue that Fawcett missed would also have been difficult to detect in the 1990s, along the Xingu River in Brazil, by a team of archaeologists, led by Dr.

Michael of the University of Florida. Heckenberger made a remarkable discovery. Working with local indigenous people, they investigated these very long ditches. And, after mapping them, he realized that these ditches were signs of a large settlement. They were the remains of carefully designed walls, centered around a plaza. And some were roads leading to more settlements. In fact, this part of the Amazon alone, about the size of New Jersey, was once a network of more than dozens of settlements that experts believe could have been home to at least 50,000 people between 1250 and 1650 AD. These settlements were designed to make the most of the forest, without depleting it: there were areas outlined for gardens and orchards.

And deeply forested areas between settlements used for animal husbandry and medicinal plants. These were the lost cities of the Amazon. And there were many more. In recent decades, experts have discovered evidence of large settlements throughout the Amazon. There is a network of trenches here dating from 200 to 1200 AD. and suggest settlements that could have supported 60,000 people. Which is much larger than many European cities at the time. And in Bolivia, scientists recently used satellite technology to reveal remains of U-shaped buildings atop 22-meter-high pyramids. All of these discoveries are leading experts to form a new consensus that the lost cities of the Amazon were once “home to millions of people.” Fawcett did not find large populations of indigenous people because it was estimated that between 80% and 95% had died from smallpox and measles spread by the first generation of European settlers between the 16th and 17th centuries.

And he did not find stone ruins because, unlike Cusco and Tenochtitlán, the indigenous people of the Amazon built with wood and earth, which decompose over time. What was left was an Amazon filled with dense vegetation and swathes of infertile soil that appeared untouched by humans when, in reality, humans had been designing it for centuries. These lost cities show how humans and the rainforest once coexisted. A relationship we have only begun to understand.