The Amazon was not a pristine wilderness, but a massive, engineered landscape
For decades, archaeologists viewed the Amazon as a cultural backwater. However, new lidar technology has revealed thousands of massive, geometric earthworks hidden beneath the canopy, suggesting a sprawling, sophisticated civilization once transformed this entire region through monumental engineering.
The traditional view of the Amazon as an untouched, 'prutine' wilderness is being dismantled by the discovery of geoglyphs—massive, geometric earthworks consisting of deep ditches and high embankments. These structures, which include circles, squares, and complex octagons, can span several acres, with some reaching as large as 123 acres. The sheer scale of these ditches, which can be 40 feet wide and 16 feet deep, implies that ancient peoples moved enormous volumes of earth without the use of metal tools or animals.
These findings point to the Aquiry civilization, which emerged around 600 B.C.E. and likely reached its peak between 100 and 300 C.E. Researchers using lidar—a laser-based remote sensing technology—have identified hundreds of previously undocumented structures in a 1,740-square-mile area of northern Brazil. By analyzing these patterns, scientists estimate that between 1.25 million and 3 million people may have inhabited over 70,600 square miles of the Southwest Amazon during this era.
While the exact function of these sites remains a subject of debate, archaeologists like Martti Pärssinen suggest they served as ceremonial or political hubs for festivities, ritual dancing, and athletic competitions. The Aquiry people also practiced intensive agriculture, cultivating maize, squash, and manioc, and managing forests of Brazil nut and peach palm trees. This evidence of hydraulic engineering and managed landscapes suggests a level of social complexity and environmental mastery that contradicts older assumptions about the limitations of tropical environments.
The decline of this civilization is also a mystery. The Aquiry geoglyphs appear to have been abandoned between 850 and 950 C.E. during what researchers describe as a relatively rapid collapse, a phenomenon that may have been linked to the decline of other major precolonial societies, such as the Maya, Tiwanaku, and Wari.
Source: Great Wonders: The Monumental Geoglyphs of Amazonia
