If this new estimate holds up, scientists have yet to identify the vast majority of earthworks strewn across the Amazon
In the millennia before European colonizers invaded the Amazon rain forest, throngs of Indigenous people moved mountains of dirt to create some 10,000 yet-to-be-identified earthworks across the region.
To look for these sites, the researchers found data gathered for other studies of biomass in the northern, central and southern regions of the Amazon rain forest. Those studies relied on a so-called light detection and ranging system that bounces an airborne laser off Earth’s surface as it passes overhead, measuring trees’ canopies but also revealing the ground below them.
Next, the researchers used computer modeling to analyze known earthwork sites and predict their spread across the Amazon. That work considered a range of geographical factors such as distance to water, elevation and soil type . That work yielded the estimate that there are at least 10,000 earthworks—perhaps even twice that many—hidden across the Amazon. To date, scientists have only found about 1,000 such sites.
And the experience of archaeologists who study the ancient Maya—and have used lidar to uncover entire networks of cities hidden in the jungle in Central America—suggests that as lidar observations of the area develop, their colleagues now beginning such work in Amazonia will indeed find a trove of new sites.
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