New England Antiquities Research Association

 

Amazonian Find Stuns Researchers

Reprinted from The Seattle Times

by Thomas H. Maugh II

 

 

September 20, 2003

 

Deep in the Amazon forest of Brazil, archaeologists have found a network of 1,000-year-old towns and villages that refutes two long-held notions: that the pre-Columbian tropical rain forest was a pristine environment that had not been altered by humans, and that the rain forest could not support a complex, sophisticated society.

A 15-mile-square region at the headwaters of the Xingu River contains at least 19 villages that are sited at regular intervals and share the same circular design. The villages are connected by a system of broad, parallel highways, Florida researchers reported in yesterday's issue of Science.

The Xinguano people who occupied the area not only built the complex towns but also dramatically altered the forest to meet their needs, clearing large areas to plant orchards and cassava while preserving other areas as a source of wood, medicine and animals.

Researchers have theorized for 10 to 20 years that such societies were possible in Amazonia, said archaeologist Jim Petersen of the University of Vermont, "but this is the first proof."

The new findings are a crucial part of "a growing body of evidence that Amazonia could support reasonably large villages and complex societies," added archaeologist Robert Carneiro of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The region today is composed primarily of small villages with populations of fewer than 150 people, each of which is independent of other settlements.

Before the current work, most of the Xinguano remaining in the region were not even aware of the accomplishments of their ancestors before the population was decimated by diseases brought by the invading Spanish in the 16th century, said archaeologist Michael Heckenberger of the University of Florida, who led the research.

Current attitudes about the region were shaped nearly 50 years ago by researchers such as archaeologist Betty Meggers of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, whose research led her to conclude that the Amazon basin was a "counterfeit paradise."

Despite the seeming abundance of plants and wildlife in the rain forest, she said, the soil in the region is so poor that it could not support the intensive agriculture necessary for the establishment of large communities.

Little evidence has been collected to refute that idea, Petersen said, largely because the Amazon area — roughly the size of the United States — is one of the "last poorly known archaeological regions on the face of the Earth."

Heckenberger estimates that more than 50 percent of the forest in the region was cut down and replaced with fruit orchards and fields of cassava, which grows better in the poor soil than most other crops.

He speculates that the Xinguano got about 80 percent of their calories from the cassava, which is still prepared today in much the same fashion as it was in the pre-Columbian era. The remainder of the diet was composed primarily of fruit and fish.

The 19 villages, occupied between roughly A.D. 800 and A.D. 1600, were arranged in two large clusters, each supporting populations of 2,500 to 5,000 people. Residential areas in the villages were dispersed in a large circle around an empty hub, which probably was ceremonial, Heckenberger said.

The individual villages were about 1-½ to 2 miles apart, connected by straight roadways that were as much as 150 feet wide, some with high mounds or "curbs" along their edges. The team also found excavated ditches in and around the ancient settlements, bridges, artificial river obstructions and ponds, raised causeways, canals and other structures, many of which are in use today.

"They are organized in a way that suggests a sophisticated knowledge of mathematics, astronomy and other sciences," Heckenberger said. "It's not earth-shattering compared to what was going on in the rest of the world at the same time, but nobody expected it in the Amazon."

 

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