This discovery changes the history of the Amazon rainforest: a huge network of millennia-old cities under the jungle

The discovery of an ancient urban network in the heart of the Amazon calls into question the history of the region.

Emblematic of the fight to protect the environment, the Amazon is one of the three most important primary forests on the planet. And many secrets are buried beneath its seven million square kilometers of vegetation. Some areas are indeed very difficult to navigate. explore, so much so that in several cases, only aerial observations could be carried out. These are also areas considered hostile. Only a few hunter-gatherer tribes probably lived in these regions, where most people lived. no form of civilization could develop. The absence of archaeological markers in evidence would bear this out. At least that's what researchers thought until the 1990s. a recent discovery.

As confirmed by the journal Science on January 11, 2024, a vast network of 2,500-year-old garden cities has recently emerged. ;eacute; discovered in Ecuador, along the Upano River and not far from the Sangay volcano. If science confirms the existence of this site, it would mean that a civilization was established in the region in the 16th century ;key. The city discovered could even correspond to the description of the Dominican Gaspar de Carvajal, who observedé a similar network during his trip to Latin America, alongside the Spaniard Francisco de Orellana, at the end of 1541. His account tells that no 'village' was more than one crossbow shot apart from the other ;(…), and there was a village which extended for five leagues without interruption from one house to another; another, which was a wonderful thing to see. see". 

The theory that a lost city in the Amazon flourished along the Upano River seems confirmed by the work of the Frenchman St's ;phen Rostain, research director at CNRS and first signatory of the Science article. During his 25 years of research, he brought to light the remains of dwellings built on artificial mounds protecting them from the harsh soil. ;tempered. In total, around a hundred remains of this type have been discovered. discovered in addition to the remains of ancient structures buried by vegetation. It's when Mr. Rostain and his & Our team finally had access to it in 2020, when they realized the true scale of the site.

The French researcher confided to Le Monde that he had found five large settlement areas in the river valley. The towns were all connected by wide, straight roads with a whole network of streets in the different neighborhoods. Research shows that these towns were inhabited by settlements separated by cultivated fields& ;eacute;s. Archaeologists estimate that this network could extend well beyond the city. of their research area, or even rival the Mayan cities.

It would even be the oldest and most complex urban network in Amazonia, dating back almost a millennium before the arrival of other civilizations in the region. té present on this site would have lived there until the middle of the first millennium, then would have moved after a & eruption of the neighboring volcano, the Sangay. Archaeologists will still have to continue their research in order to learn more about the complexity of the volcano. and the organization of this ancient society.