For a long time, experts believed the Amazon forest was one of the places that had remained largely untouched. The subsequent research studies went as far as finding small communities of nomadic hunters as they were the only ones able to make somewhat of a home in the forest because the soil quality was poor. That is, until Heiko Prümers and colleagues at the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Berlin came together to discover and reconstruct a complex and vast urban society that had been lost and forgotten.
Ranging technology and light detectors were used to discover this society in Bolivian Amazon’s Llanos de Mojos region. Researchers say this lost civilization is of a complexity and scale different from any other discovered in the same region.
Lasers were fired from the height of a helicopter to generate computer models of the ancient structures; they discovered that there were two urban centers, now known by the names Cotoca and Landívar; the cities featured many pyramids and monumental mounds.
The Society
They observed that in the annually flooded savannah, the Casarabe society designed their city with interconnected roads, tall ceremonial structures, moats, and checkpoints. All these constructions were done between the times A.D. 500 and A.D. 1400.
The people of Casarabe had taken over the land of an annually flooded savannah that spanned 1737.46 miles, that also had a 5-yard-terrace that could easily cover nearly 30 soccer fields, and 22-meter-high conical pyramids.
They made the connections of their cities with the help of 600 miles of canals and also built enormous structures with bricks made of mud. They also created a compound system of lakes and reservoirs for irrigation, and they built causeways as well.
Conclusion
Researchers believe in the fact that studying and working on these ancient societies is what may help in the conservation of the Amazon, which is no less than a haven for biodiversity. Studying the Amazon can also help us find a defense against global warming.
Let's go deep enough into the studies and look into how these old communities went about with their everyday lives. We might just be able to figure out better ways for the agricultural societies today to utilize the forests without ruining them by taking lessons from how they used to do it.
Amazon's southwestern frontier's lost civilization boasts of complexity and skill that wasn't previosly seen in any discoveries. This definitively proves, as per researchers, that the Amazon once hosted several cities.
Will we uncover any more moving forward? Only time will tell. But our money's on 'yes.'