If you look for more than a second at the squiggles on this image, you will soon make out patterns of squares as well as some long lines joining them. These images made huge headlines in the fields of archaeology and history this month because of what they have revealed about an ancient civilization in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Although scholars knew there had been human activity in this region of the Upano Valley of Ecuador long before the arrival of the Europeans, it wasn’t until using LIDAR (a surveying system that uses lasers to detect the topography of a landscape beneath a canopy of vegetation) that they discovered a far more complex culture had once lived there. LIDAR has recently succeeded in discovering Ancient Maya urban systems in Mexico and Guatemala, but the Ecuadorian research is especially important.
Rather than finding small pockets of semi-nomadic peoples, which is what scholars expected to find, LIDAR revealed about 300 square kilometers (about 100 square miles) of complex human settlements — there were 6,000 rectangular platforms, agricultural terraces that were drained by extensive channels, and connected by straight and wide roads. Together, they comprised about 15 different settlements that dated as far back as 2,500 years ago. The researchers of the study, coming from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), were stunned at how densely-populated this advanced culture was.
CNRS scholars believe that the Kilamope and Upano cultures likely populated the area, and that they lived by farming, especially growing corn and sweet potatoes. No doubt further investigation into this area will produce a better understanding of how these ancient peoples lived.
Sources: _Science_, “Two thousand years of garden urbanism in the Upper Amazon,” vol 383, no 6679, 11 Jan 2024. Image from Antoine Dorison and Stéphen Rostain in Smithsonian Magazine, Jan 12, 2024, Sonja Anderson. Article in Smithsonian title: “Archaeologists discover ancient cities hidden in the Ecuadorean Amazon”
