For centuries, it was believed
that the Amazon Rainforest was a huge expanse
of natural wilderness untouched by human hands, home to only a few
tiny indigenous tribes since time immemorial. However, new research has shown
that this longstanding belief is wrong, that in fact, the Amazon
is not an untouched wilderness, but was once home to
a monumental ancient civilization, one which has been completely missing
from the history books. What we're now learning
about this lost civilization is not only totally changing
our understanding of human history, but perhaps has the power to change
the future of humanity as we know it. Settle in; in this video, we'll show you exactly
what archaeologists have discovered, and what it means for the human race. The story begins with a man
named Francisco de Orellana. Born in 1511 into a wealthy
and influential Spanish family, Orellana obtained
a position as a conquistador in the New World
of Central and South America in 1527, where he would pursue fame
and fortune for more than a decade. In 1540, Orellana decided
to join a dangerous expedition which would head inland from Peru in an attempt to find
the rich civilizations that conquistadors believed existed at the heart
of the South American continent. The expedition set out
in February of 1541, and to say that it did not go well
would be an understatement. Across the perilous Andes Mountains
and down into oppressive jungle, for months, the expedition traveled
without ever coming across any signs of large-scale civilization. By December,
the expedition's leader was desperate, his party starving and ill, so Orellana was sent ahead
with a group of 50 men to scout the terrain
along the Coca River and look for food. When, a few days downriver, they came upon a friendly tribe camped where the Coca
met the Napo River, Orellana was eager to head back
and inform the main group, but the other members
of his party insisted that a return upriver
would be too difficult, and threatened to mutiny
if they did not continue on. With no other choice,
Orellana agreed. His party followed the Napo River
until, in early-February of 1542, it emptied into a much larger river, a powerful body of water which would become
known as the Amazon River. For months, they traveled down
the mighty Amazon, with the astonishing sites
they came across recorded by a Dominican Friar
named Gaspar de Carvajal. In his records,
Carvajal described huge settlements stretching for miles along the river,
including one, in his words, "that stretched for five leagues
[12.5 to 20 miles] without there intervening
any space from house to house." Running between these settlements
and extending inland were "fine highways," so enormous that Orellana and
his party were afraid to follow them. Particularly notable were the astounding foodstuffs
these settlements enjoyed – an abundance of "meats, partridges,
turkeys, and fish of many sorts," as well as "pineapples and avocados
and plums and custard apples and other kinds of fruit," and even "very good wine
resembling beer." Finally, more than six months after
they had reached the Amazon River, and a year and a half
since they'd set out from Peru, Orellana and his party exited
the eastern mouth of the Amazon and sailed into the Atlantic Ocean. Returning to Europe, the incredible stories
Orellana told about his journey immediately made him
an important figure, and in 1544, he was appointed
governor of the new territory, receiving a commission
to conquer and settle the lands. Unfortunately for Orellana,
the return trip was a disaster, and despite months spent wandering
up and down the Brazilian coast, he was unable to find
the mouth of the Amazon again. With his hope lost,
he died in 1546, never having returned
to the great river. Somewhat surprisingly,
after Orellana's death, no major expeditions
to the Amazon River were organized for some time. It was not until the late-1600s that Jesuit missionaries
began to push into the area and establish settlements. As they did, they did not find the civilization
which Orellana had spoken about – no large populations,
no houses stretching for miles, no massive highways
cutting through the terrain; there was only jungle, and small, sparse groups
of indigenous tribes. In short order, a consensus arose
that Orellana must have been a liar, the Amazon he described, nothing more than
a "counterfeit paradise." This consensus was only
strengthened in the 20th century, when scientists began to note
that the soil of the Amazon Rainforest was infertile and totally unable
to support large-scale agriculture. In other words, the large populations and
incredible foodstuffs Orellana described simply could not have existed. And so, the opinion was solidified – the Amazon was truly an unexplored
and undisturbed wilderness. Until recent years,
when everything changed... In late-1992, an American anthropologist
named Michael Heckenberger decided on a whim to take a little
vacation in the Mato Grosso region of the Amazon River Basin in Brazil. Though he was an anthropologist, he did not intend to look for
anything dramatic on this particular trip, but simply wanted
to spend some quality time with the indigenous tribes
in the area. By January of 1993, he had settled in
with one such tribe, the Kuikuro, where, recognizing Heckenberger
as a man of learning, the chief of the tribe
quickly told him there was a site which he needed to see. With nothing better to do, Heckenberger followed
the chief to the site, where he was shown
a massive ditch some 6-10 feet deep and more than 30 feet wide, which ran for over a mile. Beginning to haphazardly
poke around in the soil, Heckenberger suddenly realized
it was filled with small shards of pottery. Where had this pottery
come from, he wondered? Unable to resist, Heckenberger decided
to cancel the rest of his vacation and launch an official investigation
into the site. It was a good thing he did. In short order, he realized that he had
stumbled across something amazing. The massive ditch he had been shown was but a small part of a series
of earthworks and ancient sites stretching all across the region, many of them,
in Heckenberger's words, "significantly larger
than contemporary communities." What were these sites? Had someone lived there in the past
in greater numbers than the modern-day
indigenous tribes? Heckenberger had to know. And so, he set about mapping and
excavating sites across Mato Grosso. For ten years, he worked, until, in 2003, he would finally
publish his results in Science journal. Amazingly, Heckenberger had uncovered
no less than 19 settlements, appearing every 2-3 miles
throughout the area. These settlements were connected
by roads up to 165 feet wide – the width of a modern
four-lane highway – which, according to Heckenberger, "were positioned
according to the same angles" in a way that "formed a grid
throughout the region." Even more unbelievably, the study revealed that
the area between the settlements had been carefully managed, intentionally organized
into orchards and agricultural fields. It seemed that between
the settlements and the roads, the farms and the orchards, the entire area had been
utilized and developed. As Heckenberger put it, "Nothing is unconnected. The whole bloody landscape
is connected." Based on what he'd found, Heckenberger estimated
the settlements could have been home to between 2,500 and 5,000 people. Since carbon dating put their use
at between 800-1600 CE, this meant that they would have been as large as many European cities
at the same time. But how could
the remains of these settlements have been hiding for so long, as generations
of explorers and archaeologists traveled through the area? Heckenberger had a simple answer. The inhabitants
of these settlements had built using mudbrick and wood,
instead of stone, which was not
readily available in the area. This meant that it deteriorated quickly
in a tropical climate and was lost beneath the earth. Nobody had noticed
because there wasn't much to notice. Indeed, without the direction
of the local chief, Heckenberger himself
may never have started his work. It was an astonishing find, showing that there were once
more people in the region than had long been believed. But in fact,
it was only the beginning. At the same time
as Heckenberger was working, something else was taking place that further unraveled
the growing mystery... In 1999, a Brazilian paleontologist
named Alceu Ranzi was flying over
the state of Acre in Brazil, some 1,000 miles
to the west of Mato Grosso, when he noticed on the ground below, huge earthworks
seemingly carved into the terrain. Somewhere in his mind, Ranzi was already aware
of the existence of these earthworks. Back in the 1970s, when Ranzi was little more than
a fresh-faced geography student, he had been part of a team
under researcher Ondemar Dias which conducted a full
archaeological survey of the Acre area. At the time, the Amazon Rainforest was just
beginning to be clear-cut for farming, and as the landscape
beneath the jungle was revealed, Dias and his team
recorded the existence of huge shapes and patterns
in the earth. Though these earthworks
were mysterious and intriguing, the findings garnered little attention. In fact, the National Program
of Archaeological Research in Brazil, which had commissioned the project, didn't even announce
the discovery for 11 years. But by 1999, Ranzi had become
a respected scientist in his own right, and being reminded of the earthworks
out the window of his plane rekindled his interest in the sites. He decided that he had to study them
and find out what they were, and where they had come from. Within a year, he had discovered dozens of
earthworks throughout the region – circles and diamonds, hexagons and interlocking rectangles,
and more, each between
about 300 and 1,000 feet in diameter, and outlined by trenches
up to 20 feet deep. Many were even approached
by broad earthen avenues 165 feet wide and half a mile long. It was clear to Ranzi
that these earthworks, which he and others
took to calling 'geoglyphs,' had been constructed
on a large scale by humans sometime deep in the past. But who, and when? The question brought researchers
from around the world to Acre to begin an intensive study. By 2010, they were finally ready
to publish a report on their work. According to the report,
which appeared in Antiquity journal, researchers had discovered
more than 200 geoglyphs stretching across 150 miles, from Bolivia in the south, through Acre,
to the Amazonas state in the north. Incredibly, these geoglyphs
were connected by long, straight roads, giving the landscape
the appearance of a geometric grid diagrammed in the earth. Researchers dated the geoglyphs
from as late as 1283 CE, and as early as 200 CE, in either case, long before the arrival
of Europeans on the continent. Again, this showed that
the longstanding consensus asserting the Amazon
had never been home to significant populations
of people was wrong. In fact, researchers used
the expanse of the geoglyphs to estimate that the area's population may have been
as high as 60,000 people. Incredible as this was, researchers insisted that
they'd only begun to scratch the surface. Indeed, one of the lead researchers contended in interviews
that they had found "only ten percent
of what is actually there," while another told
National Geographic that "there is a lot more to discover
in these places; it's never-ending. Every week we find new structures." As predicted, after 2010, researchers did continue to find more
and more geoglyphs across the area. By 2015, they'd noted
306 geoglyphs in Acre, and by 2017,
the number was nearing 500. And then the game changed. By the late-2010s, a new technology had emerged which
was totally revolutionizing archaeology. It was called
"light detection and ranging," or LIDAR for short. Simply, LIDAR fires down
a grid of infrared laser beams, hundreds of thousands per second,
from an aircraft at the ground below. As these beams bounce off
the earth's surface, they create data points from which
the terrain can be digitally mapped, instantly revealing the earth's surface
and its archaeological features. Nowhere was LIDAR more important
to archaeologists than the Amazon, where dense jungle makes it nearly
impossible to see anything from the air, and exceedingly difficult
to traverse on foot. With LIDAR,
researchers were able to, in effect, "digitally deforest the Amazon," allowing them to explore huge areas that would have taken years
to examine using traditional methods in a matter of days or even minutes. Suddenly, LIDAR meant that
what was truly hidden in the Amazon was revealed for the world to see... The first major breakthrough
came in 2018 in Brazil's Mato Grosso region, where Michael Heckenberger
had become a legend for his work on the ground
in the decades prior. There, researchers using LIDAR
were able to uncover 81 geoglyphs near the border
between Bolivia and Brazil, and, choosing
the 24 most intriguing sites, begin to excavate. When they did,
they uncovered a complicated series of interconnected
road networks and farms, stretching between
large fortified villages built on mounds. These villages contained
causeways and large plazas, and when researchers
dug into the ground, they found pottery remains
and burial sites. On the surface, the work in 2018 was not totally unlike
that which Michael Heckenberger had already done, if over a much larger area,
and in much less time. However, there was one characteristic that made it different
and truly groundbreaking. The sites that they had found
were far from major rivers, where people were
thought to have been concentrated. This meant that an ancient civilization, rather than existing
solely along riverbanks, had actually been
a "continuous string of settlements" throughout the area
and deep into the jungle. With this information,
alongside data which already existed, researchers were able
to construct a computer model which estimated
the total population of the region. Incredibly, this model determined
the population in the area must have been between 500,000
and one million people at its peak. This was a stunning result, dramatically increasing
population estimates in the Amazon, and conceptions of the civilization
who had lived there. But Mato Grosso
was not the only region where this type of dramatic shift
was taking place... Back in Acre, where hundreds
of geoglyphs had already been found, LIDAR allowed researchers to finally
put the pieces of the puzzle together. In a 2020 study published in the Journal of
Computer Applications in Archaeology, researchers revealed that the geoglyphs and villages
found on the ground all centered around a series of mounds with radiating roads connecting them. As the study put it, "The circular mound villages are
connected across the wider landscape through paired sunken roads
with high banks that radiate from the village circle like the marks of a clock
or the rays of the Sun." So astonishing was the layout, researchers came to believe
that it may have been organized specifically to represent
indigenous conceptions of the cosmos. While findings in Mato Grosso
had forced researchers to reconceptualize the population
which had existed in the Amazon, the findings at Acre
forced researchers to reimagine what this ancient population
was capable of. How had they built
such a complex grid, one which appeared
like a piece of art from the sky? As researchers pondered this question, another breakthrough took place; this one, the most stunning of all... One place we have
not mentioned so far is the remote
Llanos de Mojos region in Bolivia, which stands in the southwest corner
of the Amazon Basin between Acre and Mato Grosso. Like its neighbors to either side, on-the-ground archeological research
in the area had revealed unusual sites, including mounds rising
up to 70 feet above the landscape, and hundreds of miles
of causeways and canals. Yet the area was so remote,
so thick with jungle, that these peculiarities
had never really been followed up on in the same way
as they had in other regions, and as incredible discoveries
emerged elsewhere, Llanos de Mojos was mostly ignored. It was not until 2022
that the shocking secrets of the region were finally revealed. That year, a group of archeologists
from Germany, the UK, and Bolivia led by a man named Heiko Prumers published a study in Nature journal which sent the scientific world
into a frenzy. Using LIDAR,
Prumers and his team had discovered 26 unique settlement sites
in the region, including, most spectacularly,
two large urban centers. Known as Landivar and Cotoca, these two urban centers were each
arranged around a monumental core which contained huge
raised platforms of earth topped by enormous conical pyramids, and each surrounded by three rings
of defenses and rampart fortifications. Simply, these centers were much bigger
and much more impressively developed than anything previously found
in Acre or Mato Grosso. But there was more than that. In the area
surrounding Landivar and Cotoca was an extensive network
of smaller settlements which spanned 200 square miles, all connected by roads and causeways. Stretching throughout the network
were endless canals and reservoirs, evidence of an advanced
hydrological system that could have been used
to control water supply across the area. Unlike previous findings
in Acre or Mato Grosso, where smaller settlements
were roughly grouped together, this was an entire urban area
centered around a system of large city centers and suburbs. As researchers described in the study, "the settlement pattern represents
a type of tropical low-density urbanism that has not previously
been described in Amazonia." Put another way by Heiko Prumers, "Nobody expected
that kind of society in that region, pyramids 20 meters high. The whole region has been so densely
habitated during the pre-Hispanic time, that's incredible to believe. There is a new civilization,
new culture, waiting for us to study them." This massive discovery
implied something which nobody had been expecting. As Prumers explained, "We can now see
that general estimates for the population of Amazonia
have been too low, much too low. But everything about these sites – the scale of the large settlements,
the reservoirs, the defences, the sophisticated infrastructure –
points to large populations." But just how large
could these populations have been? Numerous researchers have begun to add up the numbers
and use different models to estimate how many people
could have lived in this previously lost Amazonian civilization. The most commonly cited
estimate today suggests that at its peak, the Amazon would have been home
to between 6-9 million people, while others say
that it was surely over 10 million, and some even believe
it could have been as much as 20 million. For comparison,
the population of Spain when Francisco de Orellana
first traveled down the Amazon River was 6.5 million. Either way, these estimates
have blown the roof off anything anyone had believed possible
in the region. In only a few years, the population estimates went
from thousands to tens of thousands, to a million, to millions. Does it not seem likely that the number
will grow further in the future? Prumers, for one,
believes it could rise. In his words, "I'm sure that
in the next 10 or 20 years we'll see a lot of these cities, and some even bigger than the ones
we are presenting in our paper." Take a step back. We now know
that the longstanding view of mainstream science is wrong, officially and definitively disproven. There was in fact a massive civilization
existing in the Amazon, just as Francisco de Orellana
originally recorded. With this conclusively established, the question becomes,
what happened to them? If the accounts of Orellana
in the 1500s were true, why did future explorers
not find anything, neither a huge civilization,
nor even the remains of one? The prevailing answer is a tragic one. When the Europeans
first arrived in South America, they brought with them diseases
like smallpox and influenza which decimated
the indigenous populations, who had no resistance to them. Estimates suggest that 90%
of the population of South America, and perhaps as much as 99%, was wiped out by disease
between the 16th and 18th centuries. Understanding this, the explanation for why
no great civilization was found becomes quite simple. The population of this civilization, which once reached into the millions, was wiped out over the course
of only a few generations. As people disappeared, the jungle began to take over
where they had lived, covering their cities. Because they had built
with mudbrick and wood instead of stone, the evidence of their existence
quickly deteriorated, lost beneath the jungle soil. By the time Europeans began
to explore the area more thoroughly, a century and a half
after the initial journey of Orellana, there was nothing left to find, leaving them to conclude that
the civilization had never existed. There is one other question
which arises from the definitive proof that large populations
existed in the Amazon before the arrival of Europeans. Remember, modern science
has shown that poor Amazonian soil cannot support large-scale agriculture. So how did this Amazonian civilization
feed a population of millions? The secret is something
called terra preta, a near mystical discovery which
not only explains Amazonian civilization, but which may change
our world in modern times. As early as the 19th century, scientists and explorers
began to officially document the existence of
a strange dark earth in the Amazon. Called terra preta,
literally "black earth" in Portuguese, it stood in stark contrast to the normal
orange-yellow soil of the Amazon, not only in color,
but for its extreme fertility. Knowledge of this terra preta
was first popularized in the West by an 1879 account
from explorer named Herbert Smith which appeared in the popular
Scribner's Monthly magazine. There, Smith wrote, "The cane-field itself
is a splendid sight; the stalks ten feet high in many places,
and as big as one's wrist. The secret was the rich terra preta." Despite incredible accounts like these, nobody really thought
to look into terra preta, perhaps believing it to be
little more than yet another myth. But when scientists
did finally get around to studying it in the mid-20th century, they quickly came to realize
that it was basically a magic soil. Within terra preta soil, scientists found abundant
organic matter like plant residue, animal feces,
and fish and animal bones, as well as tiny pottery shards. Moreover, the soil contained
unusually high concentrations of low-temperature charcoal residues, and extremely high levels of nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus,
calcium, and zinc, as well as high levels
of microorganic activities. Somehow,
these characteristics came together to give the soil
mind-blowing properties. First, not only was the soil
far more fertile than normal, but it somehow
maintained its nutrient levels for generations on end. Consider,
modern slash and burn agriculture is not sustainable in the Amazon
because once the land is cleared, high rainfall leaches
the nutrients out of the soil. Even with modern chemical fertilizers, regular Amazonian soil
cannot maintain crop yields into the third growing season. And yet, terra preta
remains fertile year after year. A biochemist from Cornell University
explained just how unusual this is: "the soils retain their high fertility
in an environment with high decomposition,
humidity and temperatures. In this environment,
according to text books, this soil shouldn't exist." On top of that, terra preta was found
to somehow regenerate itself, almost as if it was alive, meaning it could actually
increase its own volume and transform poor soil
into highly fertile ground. What is most interesting is that while modern science
has recorded these properties, they have not yet
been able to figure out how terra preta was made
by indigenous populations. And make no mistake, they're trying. In recent years, huge investments have been made
into uncovering the secrets of terra preta, because, well,
it just might save the modern world. Think about it. If scientists could figure out how to recreate
the super fertile terra preta, crop yields could be increased
around the globe, particularly in hard-to-farm areas
with poor soil, without the toxic effects of fertilizer, helping to feed a modern world
where over a billion people are currently food insecure. More than that, the high charcoal content
of terra preta has been shown to capture substantial amounts
of carbon out of the atmosphere. What might be most frustrating
to modern science, as they struggle to replicate
these amazing properties, is that recent research has shown
that not only did the Amazonians know how to make terra preta, but they did so in huge quantities. As more and more settlements
have been uncovered across the Amazon, terra preta has consistently
been found around the sites. In fact, some estimates suggest that it might cover 3.2%
of the total floor of the Amazon. Simply, the ancient Amazonians
created and used terra preta as a foundation
of their massive civilization, the secret which allowed them
to feed a population of millions. But if terra preta was the foundation, it actually went
so much further than that. In just the past few years, research has shown that
not only is the Amazon Rainforest not an untouched wilderness,
but in fact, it's really more of a massive garden. Seriously. Studies have determined that
the ancient peoples of the Amazon have been domesticating
and cultivating specific plants for thousands of years. Today, plants like the Brazil nut tree, Amazon tree-grape,
ice cream bean tree, and cocoa tree – the ideal plants to feed
a flourishing civilization – are "hyper-dominant" in the Amazon. The reason is that
the Amazonian civilization carefully cultivated them
to ensure their abundance. When most of the population
died of disease after the arrival of Europeans, these dominant plants
simply ran amok, unchecked in the tropical climate, resulting in the rainforest
we know today. Taken together,
this leads to an incredible conclusion. Not only was there
a massive and thriving civilization in the Amazon
before the arrival of Europeans, but one which did things
in a totally different way. While their counterparts in Europe rapidly depleted
the fertility of their own lands, and invested massive resources
into sailing around the world to do the same in new locales, the Amazonians developed
a type of sustainable fertility. As one researcher
who has worked in the area put it, "These people were doing something
we don't seem very successful at: sustaining populations
without destroying biodiversity." Put another way
by a different researcher, "What we're seeing with the Amazon
is not so much 'culture versus nature' but rather a dispute between two
different modes of human occupation" – one which bleeds the earth dry, leading to the predicament
we find ourselves in today, and the other which expands
fertility and sustainability, and the habitability of the planet. Here is the good news. Already, modern scientists are hunting
the secrets of Amazonian terra preta soil, which, if discovered,
could totally change our modern world. But this is only one secret
long lost in the Amazon. As the remainder of
the more than 2 million square miles still covered by jungle gets explored, as new sites are found
by LIDAR and excavated, what else might we learn? We've just added
an entirely new civilization to the roster. There is little doubt
that by studying them, we will gain a new understanding
of humanity's history, and perhaps humanity's future as well. Want to know more about long lost
civilizations recently discovered, and what they might mean
for humanity moving forward? Check out our video on Nan Madol,
the ancient city built by giants. Once again,
thank you for sticking to the end. If you enjoyed our research
and the videos we make, please leave us a like,
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