Big picture. A new model of the Amazon predicts that terra preta is more likely to be found along rivers in the eastern part of the rainforest. The letters indicate known archaeological sites.
Posted on 01/13/2014 3:40:59 PM PST by Renfield
Look around the Amazon rainforest today and it’s hard to imagine it filled with people. But in recent decades, archaeologists have started to find evidence that before Columbus’s arrival, the region was dotted with towns and perhaps even cities. The extent of human settlement in the Amazon remains hotly debated, partly because huge swaths of the 6-million-square-kilometer rainforest remain unstudied by archaeologists. Now, researchers have built a model predicting where signs of pre-Columbian agriculture are most likely to be found, a tool they hope will help guide future archaeological work in the region.
In many ways, archaeology in the Amazon is still in its infancy. Not only is it difficult to mount large-scale excavations in the middle of a tropical rainforest, but until recently, archaeologists assumed there wasn’t much to find. Amazonian soil is notoriously poor quality—all the nutrients are immediately sucked up by the rainforest’s astounding biodiversity—so for many years, scientists believed that the kind of large-scale farming needed to support cities was impossible in the region. Discoveries of gigantic earthworks and ancient roads, however, hint that densely populated and long-lasting population hubs once existed in the Amazon. Their agricultural secret? Pre-Columbian Amazonians enriched the soil themselves, creating what archaeologists call terra preta.
Terra preta—literally “black earth”—is soil that humans have enriched to have two to three times the nutrient content of the surrounding, poor-quality soil, explains Crystal McMichael, a paleoecologist at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne. Although there is no standard definition for terra preta, it tends to be darker than other Amazonian soils and to have charcoal and pre-Columbian pottery shards mixed in. Most of it was created 2500 to 500 years ago. Like the earthworks, terra preta is considered a sign that a particular area was occupied by humans in the pre-Columbian past....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sciencemag.org ...
Big picture. A new model of the Amazon predicts that terra preta is more likely to be found along rivers in the eastern part of the rainforest. The letters indicate known archaeological sites.
Ping
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_Orellana
Read Buddy Levy’s bio of Francisco.
He found out the hard way that the Amazon river was full of cultures all the way to the sea.
I am fascinated by ancient cultures all over the world. How and why did so many build the same type buildings? What connection did they have? Why did so many build pyramids? Who did the huge figures in South America? It is amazing.
The lord Jesus just keeps bigger and bigger, many flocks, many mansions.
Smile...
It was more than a generation before anyone else came down the Amazon, but they found almost nothing where Orellana had remarked on the astonishing variety of cultures he passed by. Disease had wiped them out, and I think even today we have no idea what existed there. River of Darkness
A pyramid is a square version of a cone. Pour sand in one spot and you get a cone. It is naturally stable. This fact was not lost on ancient man. a pyramid is simply a more perfect version of a cone where the pile of stones are stable and will not topple.
Ok. Makes sense but who and why were the huge figures made? I have seen explanations but did not like them. When I was a teen, I remember reading a Hardy Boys book that was about them but that was many decades ago. : ) I think it was about them.
Want to move a huge stone? Then watch this guy. You need to have QuickTime to see the video.
Don’t forget to check out writings of Gloria Farley about the many traces of Europeans in North America dating back as far as 4,000 years ago. Probably the same in the Amazon, explaining the tall, pale, civilized people.
They are the descendants of Noah and his sons.
THey all had a shared worldview and culture.
For more, search on YouTube for “Charles Clough”. He’s a US Army meteorologist and Dallas Theological Seminary trained pastor and teacher. Look for his “Bible Framework” series on the web, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA4tmhwatm4
http://www.bibleframework.com/
What do y’all think of the shows about aliens helping build things? Some people are really pushing that theory. No one knows for sure but I have my doubts. I also saw a few minutes about people who worshiped other gods helping to plan/build DC. People are pushing odd beliefs now.
Fascinating hints in recent years of a far more populous and sophisticated civilization in the Amazon. What a daunting task to dig there, though. Objects decay and are overgrown so quickly.
I know some 'aliens' helped my neighbors do some impressive landscaping awhile back. :-P
Funny but I was talking about the kind that comes from space. : )
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