The Amazon forest is the result of an 8,000-year experiment, and other findings

Hello peeps, It's been a while since I stopped by ATS, it feels like going back to your old dusty and moldy home (in a good way, like when you go on a long holiday and come back)

Anyways,
I just came upon some findings which I don't think have been posted yet according to my search. I thought them very interesting. (If they have, please forgive me, this search function is still crap)
Not too long ago, when I saw the film 'The Lost City Of Z' (which I recommend purely as a film and topic, not for its historical accuracy regarding the main characters. Apparently the real Percy Fawcett was nothing like portrayed in the film), I read a bit about lost cities of the Amazon, and came upon some interesting theories saying that the Amazon was actually much more civilized, and 'industrialised' if I can use the word, than we previously thought, by 'we' I mean the European Colonialist point of view.
Stuff like Amazon explorers uncover signs of a real El Dorado
or Ancient Amazon Actually Highly Urbanized
Which probably is nothing new to some of you guys, but I never had actually read about such findings.


Now I read these findings which say that The Amazon forest is the result of an 8,000-year experiment

Though the Amazon forest may appear wild and uncharted, a new comprehensive study has revealed that it's actually the result of some of humanity's earliest experiments with farming. People have been living in the Amazon for more than 10,000 years, building some of the greatest civilizations of the ancient world. They also dramatically changed the Amazon forest in ways that are still obvious today.

and Evidence that ancient farms had very different origins than previously thought

It's an idea that could transform our understanding of how humans went from small bands of hunter-gatherers to farmers and urbanites. Until recently, anthropologists believed cities and farms emerged about 9,000 years ago in the Mediterranean and Middle East. But now a team of interdisciplinary researchers has gathered evidence showing how civilization as we know it may have emerged at the equator, in tropical forests. Not only that, but people began altering their environments for food and shelter about 30,000 years earlier than we thought.

For centuries, archaeologists believed that ancient people couldn't live in tropical jungles. The environment was simply too harsh and challenging, they thought. As a result, scientists simply didn't look for clues of ancient civilizations in the tropics. Instead, they turned their attention to the Middle East, where we have ample evidence that hunter-gatherers settled down in farming villages 9,000 years ago during a period dubbed the "Neolithic revolution." Eventually, these farmers' offspring built the ziggurats of Mesopotamia and the great pyramids of Egypt. It seemed certain that city life came from these places and spread from there around the world.

But now that story seems increasingly uncertain. In an article published in Nature Plants, Max Planck Institute archaeologist Patrick Roberts and his colleagues explain that cities and farms are far older than we think. Using techniques ranging from genetic sampling of forest ecosystems and isotope analysis of human teeth, to soil analysis and lidar, the researchers have found ample evidence that people at the equator were actively changing the natural world to make it more human-centric.

Just thought to leave this here. I know he's not universally loved, but as Graham Hancock says, "stuff just keeps on getting older"...

a reply to: athousandlives

Awesome!
Read the book City of Z...its vastly better than the movie, as usual.

[snipped]

Percy Fawcett was alota things...but brave driven and intelligent are on the menu with that giant of a man.

I love when information comes to light that shatters our preconceived notions to what we think we know.

Just goes to show that everything we "know" could be nothing at all.

Awesome find op s&f

I don't know. There may have been pockets of urbanism here and there, but I don't think the whole area was urban.

The sheer volume of plant life, its depth and thickness, seems too vast to have been anything other than what it is today.

a reply to: BlueJacket

Hi BlueJacket, thanks for stopping by, I dont know who Harte is but thanks, I have nothing to fight for, I just believe that we as a species don't know the half of what really happened before..

I don't have any objection to it. Protofarming is not agriculture per se.

Organized, large scale agriculture isn't that hard to spot. How it all started, on the other hand, has always been anyone's guess.

I've always thought that even the earliest hunter-gatherers probably knew about planting. After all, it doesn't take a genius to see that seeds sprout. In a nomadic life, it would be quite easy to grasp the idea of sowing seeds before you left for the season so that when you come back around next season, there's more food for you.

I believe this activity has been evidenced in the ancient middle east dating back well before the accepted dates of agriculture on the scale necessary to provide for a civilization.

Harte

For those who enjoyed the movie and/or book, I highly recommend Headhunters of the Amazon by F. W. Up de Graff and Candice Millard's T he River of Doubt.

The latter is about Theodore Roosevelt's Amazon expedition. The former is prefaced by Roosevelt's son, Kermit, and is the story of Up de Graff's Amazon expedition. Both occurred in the early 20th century and the accounts are excellent and engaging.

Just noticed the post formatting is f***ed up. That's on ATS' end. The forum software has an issue.

a reply to: Harte
I agree, we dont know jack about what started the agricultural revolution and human civilizations.
Humans and plants have after all lived together since well, humans first appeared, and our ancestors before that must have had a basic understanding of plant and life cycles, at the very least.

It's just cool for me to see mainstream and accepted science and archeology to be questioned, and relevant new discoveries being made like this.

If you look at all the archeological reports from the Amazon, they have discovered hundreds of cities that had been reclaimed by the forest.

delange.org...

delange.org...

i42.tinypic.com...

img15.deviantart.net...

This is the kind of architecture you find in rural areas which are mostly farmland/fields, villages and country roads. But they are completely overgrown with trees.

a reply to: stormcell

Cool, thanks for the link and pics! Do you know where the last two links/pics were taken?

edit: I hadn't even heard of Belize temples like that, that sculpture is beautiful!

originally posted by: athousandlives
a reply to: stormcell

Cool, thanks for the link and pics! Do you know where the last two links/pics were taken?

edit: I hadn't even heard of Belize temples like that, that sculpture is beautiful!

I tried looking some up using tineye.com . This is a reverse search engine that looks up websites that contain an image. I suspect that one may be computer rendered, and the other is in China.

This one is real:

delange.org...

delange.org...

delange.org...

delange.org...

originally posted by: athousandlives
... we as a species don't know the half of what really happened before.

I'd agree with you. It's unfortunate we don't control the narrative. The people that do make a lot of money off their latest editions of legends & lore.

S&F

a reply to: stormcell

Wow, mate, I have to say I never seen these pics, which one you think is rendered and the chinese?
These are great, I always only seen the usual and most famous mexican and south american large complexes like Cichen Itza and Teotihuacan, or Puma Punku and Machu Pichu.

originally posted by: Restricted
I don't know. There may have been pockets of urbanism here and there, but I don't think the whole area was urban.

The sheer volume of plant life, its depth and thickness, seems too vast to have been anything other than what it is today.

Take into account that the oldest tree on this planet today is believed to be less than 5,000 years old. Add in the fact that in the past the Sahara desert was once a fertile green pasture.

Our ( mainstream ) current view of human history is really quite uninspired. I feel the ancients had a much better grasp on human history.

a reply to: athousandlives

This lad did a nice little video, of course it is not the answer but he does pose some very interesting question's, he is worth watching on other thing's too but his opinion's are just his opinion's, still I like them.



Be ware of these though because while I like them I don't take them as fact and would recommend you do not either though they are very interesting musing's and idea's, how much validity they have though?.
Still very interesting and quite relevant.
The Second is in India but he believes it is somehow linked to his theory of the first video.

I don't think that is too suprising,when the Spanairds discovered ,the land it was much better planned then anything they had seen,they actually had concerns of hygiene,something europeans didn't,history is written to try to convey a notion,I don't believe MS scientist's,they have one agenda

I don't think that is too suprising,when the Spanairds discovered ,the land it was much better planned then anything they had seen,they actually had concerns of hygiene,something europeans didn't,history is written to try to convey a notion,I don't believe MS scientist's,they have one agenda

a reply to: athousandlives

Once upon a time, this whole planet was a cyclopean stone wonderland, with all flora and fauna controlled.

a reply to: solve

You should see my garden after 2 weeks of not weeding.

I can't imagine 2000 years! This IMO is totally plausible.

"Planet of the Plants."
Humans are insignificant.