Lost world discovered in Amazon - Brazilian Nazca Geogliphs!!

Once Hidden by Forest, Carvings in Land Attest to Amazon’s Lost World

Edmar Araújo still remembers the awe.

As he cleared trees on his family’s land decades ago near Rio Branco, an outpost in the far western reaches of the Brazilian Amazon, a series of deep earthen avenues carved into the soil came into focus.

“These lines were too perfect not to have been made by man,” said Mr. Araújo, a 62-year-old cattleman. “The only explanation I had was that they must have been trenches for the war against the Bolivians.”

Geoglyphs, geometric designs carved into the earth, have become increasingly visible with the deforestation of the Amazon

The deforestation that has stripped the Amazon since the 1970s has also exposed a long-hidden secret lurking underneath thick rain forest: flawlessly designed geometric shapes spanning hundreds of yards in diameter.

Alceu Ranzi, a Brazilian scholar who helped discover the squares, octagons, circles, rectangles and ovals that make up the land carvings, said these geoglyphs found on deforested land were as significant as the famous Nazca lines, the enigmatic animal symbols visible from the air in southern Peru.

They said that they are far from pre-Columbian settlements and the lack of signs of human settlement within and around the earthworks, like vestiges of housing and trash piles, as well as soil modification for farming, discounted the trenches theory.

Read the whole article at the New York Times

More pictures of these enigmatic geogliphs:

For all our technological advancement...we know so little about our own planet, Earth.

Good find.....

Des

wow cool find OP ! s+f

just a shame this is all being found cause of deforestation.... i wonder what they are ?

reply to post by fluff007

I have no idea, seems like somewhat archeological though.

Here, back in 2010, there was "Hundreds of Geoglifos Discovered in the Amazon". Take a look at the videos and photos, very impressive!

Some can even be seen with Google Earth:

S&F

Another discovery that sheds more light on our lost past. Nice find.

To me the lines resembles old foundation footprints from old buildings. some of the longer ones I think would have been used for irrigation of some sort just because there is no evidence of trash doesn't meant a simple community did not have an infrastructure.

This would imply that the deforested portions (in this area, not the whole Amazon basin) were not first-growth rainforest, but had been previously cleared and inhabited.

My heart sinks at this, because I am sure the same thought will occur, and probably has already, to those with an economic stake in deforesting the Amazon, not to mention the anti-'global warming' crowd.

Originally posted by -W1LL
To me the lines resembles old foundation footprints from old buildings.

So where are all the stones gone?
Is there any evidence that they could have been "recycled" to built other constructions?

reply to post by elevenaugust


i am totally fascinated by these ! wish i could watch the youtube vids.... but sadly cant stream where i am :/

but i can read and look at the pictures ! do you know if there are any teams still doing any digs or work on these finds ?

reply to post by elevenaugust


Another very interesting spot, thanks elevenaugust.

Will see if i can find it to link, but i have read a report before that showed how quickly land could be swallowed by jungle - much quicker than i thought possible. So really, there could be sites like this everywhere, even from fairly recently.

Just waiting now for the first "it must have been the aliens" comment.......

cool post!
my question is if they found this after cutting down the trees,were they made before the trees were there?
if this is the case,on average,how old were the trees that were there in the first place?
a forest doesn't just show up,it takes centuries to establish.
so i guess what i'm getting at is that this site must be very old!

reply to post by elevenaugust


Just out of interest, is there any idea who the ruins are attributed to? Sorry if this is a stupid question, i looked but couldn't find!

reply to post by reficul


Well, the research i have read before (still searching for link) suggests that a site could be reclaimed by a forest in as little as 50 years and often in less than 100 years - these are high growth areas and with nothing to interrupt growth (lack of humans interfering) this process escalates unimpeded.

I have to say this was a fair few years ago so thinking may have changed on this.