A ‘Stonehenge,’ and a Mystery, in the Amazon

A ‘Stonehenge,’ and a Mystery, in the Amazon
(source: NYTimes.com)

CALÇOENE, Brazil — As the foreman for a cattle ranch in the far reaches of the Brazilian Amazon, Lailson Camelo da Silva was razing trees to convert rain forest into pasture when he stumbled across a bizarre arrangement of towering granite blocks.

“I had no idea that I was discovering the Amazon’s own Stonehenge,” said Mr. da Silva, 65, on a scorching October day as he gazed at the archaeological site located just north of the Equator. “It makes me wonder: What other secrets about our past are still hidden in Brazil’s jungles?”

After conducting radiocarbon testing and carrying out measurements during the winter solstice, scholars in the field of archaeoastronomy determined that an indigenous culture arranged the megaliths into an astronomical observatory about 1,000 years ago, or five centuries before the European conquest of the Americas began.

There have been a few articles out over the past several years of 'stonehenges' found in the Amazon, this one talks about the latest discovery.

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

This is fascinating. Excellent thread. Ive never heard about these amazon stonehenges.

Gots a little adventure this morning now reading up on them.

Love how we still have frontiers on land

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

It's always fascinating when people start "to" find things "close" to their own habitat.. I hope the have a "go" at locally instead of taking in an "away" crew trying to dig in sacred grounds.. So no "idiots" come in into an old sacred place..

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

This is fascinating.. if it was there 500 years before the Europeans, I can only imagine how different the landscape must have looked. Apparently it went unnoticed for a long, long time as the rainforest grew up around it.

It's heartbreaking that deforestation is what revealed this site though.. mankind needs to find a way to live within the resourceful constraints of our planet. It's not sustainable and we are like lemmings walking towards a cliff...

This is a fascinating discovery but at what cost are these discoveries made?

The farmer was clearing Amazon jungle to make way for farmland, each time we make one of these finds how many acres of rainforest are cut down?

Just wish this was found by an archaeological team on an expedition so I didnt have to be such a negative nancy

just a point to consider - for everyone lamenting " deforestation " :

was the site forrested at the time of its construction // use ???

originally posted by: ignorant_ape
just a point to consider - for everyone lamenting " deforestation " :

was the site forrested at the time of its construction // use ???

Obviously not, but then Mesoamerican civilizations partially caused their own collapse from overuse of the land. Forests today provide an important role as a carbon-sink for Greenhouse gases, something that wasn't a concern 1,000 years ago (plus at that time, most of N. America was forest, excluding the southwest).

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

Great article, I hadn't heard of these either. Also from your article (bolding mine):

Their findings, along with other archaeological discoveries in Brazil in recent years — including giant land carvings, remains of fortified settlements and even complex road networks — are upending earlier views of archaeologists who argued that the Amazon had been relatively untouched by humans except for small, nomadic tribes.
Instead, some scholars now assert that the world’s largest tropical rain forest was far less “Edenic” than previously imagined, and that the Amazon supported a population of as many as 10 million people before the epidemics and large-scale slaughter put into motion by European colonizers.

Wow. It's an area I know nothing about and so these threads are gratefully received. I suppose that the easiest way to measure the time is with a stick in the ground and so, arguably, it would be stranger still to not find these structures dotted around? The ceremonial aspect is interesting too, we seem to be celebratory creatures by nature.

a reply to: beansidhe

It probably served a practical purpose as well. Marking the changing of the seasons for harvest and planting, etc...

Though I'm sure parties were thrown, too. Any excuse for a party, after all

a reply to: seagull

Yes, absolutely! Always best to be poised by the calendar, waiting for the exact nano-second for the drinking to begin.

a reply to: beansidhe

That would have been me, when I was much younger...

These monolithic structures are incredible, and the more we learn about 'em, the more we realize that our ancestors were actually not the knuckle-dragging proto-neanderthals they've been portrayed as for so long. They were actually rather sophisticated in their knowledge of the world around them.

If you haven't already... You might look into sacred geometry and how it relates to things like Stonehenge and places like them where ceremonies took place. Fascinating stuff. ...and some of it is actually true!!