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full screen Archaeologists have discovered a network of vanished cities. Photo: Antoine Dorison, Stéphen Rostain Via AP
Using new technology, archaeologists have discovered a network of lost cities in the Amazon rainforest.
– It was a lost valley of cities. It’s unbelievable, says archaeologist Stéphen Rostain.
He already discovered more than twenty years ago a number of earth mounds and buried roads in Ecuador.
– At the time, I wasn’t sure how everything was connected, says Rostain.
Now, new technology shows that the sites were part of a dense network of settlements and connecting roads hidden by the Andes mountain range.
The Upano people lived in the settlements between 500 BC and 300 to 600 AD.
Residences and ceremonial buildings had been erected on more than 6,000 earthen mounds. They were surrounded by farmland with drainage canals.
The largest roads were about ten meters wide and were between one and two miles long.
The area was home to at least 10,000 people, perhaps as many as 15,000 or 30,000 people, according to archaeologist Antoine Dorison, who co-authored the study published in the journal Science.
Stéphen Rostain says that there has always been an incredible diversity of people and settlements in the Amazon.
– We just learn more about them, he says.