Get the latest tech news
Lost cities of the Amazon: how science is revealing ancient garden towns hidden in the rainforest | Amazon rainforest
Archaeologists using 3D mapping are uncovering the remains of thousands of green metropolises with composted gardens, fisheries, and forests groomed into orchards
While the remote scans still need to be verified on-site, Peripato says the findings so far make a compelling case that ancestral Amazonians systematically built up large urban centres and engineered the habitat to their needs and appetites with composted gardens, fisheries, and forests groomed into orchards in complex, sustainably run systems – which could offer lessons for modern cities. Photograph: Diego GurgelBy deploying remote sensing for archaeology, scans for radiocarbon dating, soil chemistry and phytolith analysis(the study of microscopic mineral deposits in ancient plant remains), multidisciplinary teams of scientists have been detecting traces of Amazon basin cities far older, larger, more populous – and more sustainably run – than anyone had imagined. The South American rainforest is mostly devoid of stone and scientists previously had to piece together scraps of evidence of lost Amazonian cities built from clay, thatch, wood and hides – perishable materials that had long since vanished.
Or read this on r/technology
