Kind: captions
Language: en
foreign
for centuries historians imagined the
ancient Amazon as a wilderness
no civilization
barely any people
nature Untouched by human hand
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[Applause]
archaeologists largely ignored it
people just assumed that there was
nothing here in the Amazon and there
wasn't words looking for things here so
nobody came
but now dramatic new discoveries are
shattering those old assumptions
all of a sudden we see something in the
Amazon
that had been assumed couldn't exist
there
huge ancient agricultural systems
Urban centers over a thousand years old
mysterious Monumental architecture
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this has changed our perception of
ancient Amazonian societies
from the last ice age stunning paintings
left by some of the very first humans in
the Amazon
plus here are captured the thoughts of
many groups over thousands of years
who were these
a artists and builders
were the civilizations they created
finally archaeologists are revealing the
untold story of the ancient Builders of
the Amazon
right now on Nova
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the vast Amazon
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covering almost half of South America
about two and a half million square
miles of tropical forest
the largest and most biodiverse
rainforest on the planet
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industrial animal and plant species
and about 20 percent of the planets
flowing fresh water
Amazon's Natural History is spectacular
but what about its ancient human history
thank you
great ancient civilizations flourished
in other parts of the Americas like the
Maya and the Inca
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all built thriving cities filled with
temples they reshaped the landscape to
support huge agricultural systems
many still visible today
but until recently most scientists
viewed the ancient Amazon as Untamed
nature A wilderness it was pretty
standard the Assumption of both the
public and the scientific community that
the Amazon was pretty much untouched
nature that human groups there were only
small and relatively mobile groups
living more or less one with nature
for many centuries we thought that in
Amazonia civilizations and complex
societies had just never developed
if you look at the history of archeology
in South America people just assumed
that there was nothing here in the
Amazon and there wasn't words looking
for things here so nobody came and then
this idea that there was nothing
happening here in the past became very
strong
the lack of complex Societies in the
Amazon seemed to have a good explanation
its poor soils made intensive
agriculture impossible
without intensive agriculture dense
populations and complex societies could
never exist
this was the dominant argument for
decades
new generation of archaeologists is
proving that wrong
one of the scientists leading the way is
Bolivian archaeologist Carla Jaimes
she works in a remote area of the
Bolivian Amazon called the yanos de
mojos
I have to admit that when they first
asked me if I wanted to do archeology
it seemed really remote and inhospitable
to me what are we going to find in the
Amazon jungle
foreign
now it's over 23 years that I've been
doing research in vedanos De mojos
and the more I learn about it the more
it surprises me
Carla's greatest surprise is that
wherever she looks she finds the
remnants of an ancient culture
especially when she looks at the
landscape from the air
come on
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the edges of the rainforest where jungle
gives way to Grasslands geometric
markings cover the plains
and to suddenly see those marks on the
Earth
perfectly geometric
he can gigantic in places where today
there is nobody
this would make the mind of any
archaeologist explode
who made them how long ago why
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Carla has devoted much of her career to
those questions
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slowly she is getting answers
evidence suggests the marks are raised
Terraces probably constructed by ancient
people to protect their crops from flood
waters
Platformers The Terraces are 20 to 30
meters wide and 200 or 300 meters long
date date from 1600 years ago up to 500
years ago
so they were functioning for over a
thousand years
The Terraces suggest intensive
agriculture
could this be evidence of dense
populations or even ancient cities
in another part of the yanos de mojos
Carla has been investigating a number of
Hills covering the landscape
it's
incredible the quantity of pottery we
find on the surface of this hill
this for example is a fragment of a
grater which they use to prepare
different foods like Peppers maniac and
corn
since doesn't have any stone the ancient
people who lived here had to make many
of their basic tools from Pottery like
mortars and graters
this Pottery we find on the surface I
calculate is about 800 years old
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when she and her team started digging
below the surface they found so many
artifacts They concluded the hills were
not natural at all
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so here we are on top of Loma which is
one of hundreds of small hills in the
Southeast Thanos de mojos a hundred
years ago people thought they were
natural formations we now know they were
constructed over 1500 years ago
rather than Hills these were giant
carefully built Earthworks along with
the agricultural Terraces
this was yet more evidence than ancient
amazonians were not just living on the
landscape they were actively
transforming it
we now know that these societies left a
huge mark on the landscape
is a landscape that has been modified
foreign even knowing how ancient people
transformed the landscape Carla was
unprepared for the amazing Discovery her
team made in 2019 at a large Mound
called kotoka
about 10 kilometers from here is one of
the biggest mounds of this region
in 2019 we decided to do a lighter
survey of it
lidar is the remote sensing Laser
Technology that's revolutionizing
archeology
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lidar bounces thousands of tiny laser
beams off the landscape and then
assembles their Reflections into a 3D
image
forests and grasslands can then be
digitally cleared away to reveal the
hidden outlines of ancient human
settlements beneath
when the lidar images of the large Mound
were processed
Carla could hardly believe her eyes
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what we saw was the outlines of a place
that was so big we realized it was not
just a single Mound
it was a collection of Mounds that
formed what we could call the city or
some sort of urban complex
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measures about 600 acres and inside it
there are at least 18 separate
structures
nothing quite like this had ever been
seen in the Amazon
breathtaking discovery which
reverberated around the world
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[Applause]
but was it really a city
as archaeologists discover more evidence
of ancient structures in the Amazon
debates arise about the nature of the
societies that built them
in fact many people didn't want to
believe that there was anything like
urbanism in the pre-columbian Amazon
well as time goes on and Technologies
improve we start to see that wow these
types of societies existed in many parts
of the Amazon the only thing is is they
don't fit our standard model of what an
urban society would look like based on
models that come from deep in Western
Historical experience Egypt Mesopotamia
Greece and Rome
the lidar images of kotoka show a huge
constructed platform
sitting feet high and spanning over 50
acres
this was the focus of an extensive Urban
complex
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in its Center was a huge 70-foot pyramid
which archaeologists believe was
probably used for Grand rituals and
administrative functions
this Civic ceremonial construction
dominated a network of settlements that
spread out over the surrounding Plains
working in another part of the Amazon
Michael heckenberger was one of the
first to describe this distinctive type
of Amazonian settlement pattern
we proposed that this indeed was a form
of pre-modern urbanism that in fact they
didn't have cities but the connections
and networks very systematic and very
tightly integrated of towns and Villages
had the same scale of impact perhaps
organized the same scale of populations
as people were accustomed to talking
about and small to medium-sized Urban
civilizations elsewhere in the world
after the discovery of 2019 Carla is now
expanding her lidar surveys looking for
yet more ancient settlements
she works with the indigenous people who
still live in the forests of the yanos
de mojos like the onisionoza leader of
the mohenyo indigenous community of San
Bartolo
the unisia and her family are probably
descendants of the people who created
the ancient Urban complexes
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volcano
I think there is something that is
really changing in archeology It Is our
commitment to return the results of our
research to the communities where we
work before research would be published
in foreign languages in Publications in
other countries now we make sure the
Publications come back here people want
to have them translated and keep them in
their own libraries
before starting his flight lidar expert
renan Torres explains the remote sensing
Laser Technology to dionysia
he has the latest generation of lidar
equipment which is now so small it can
be mounted on a drone
this is a drone on which is mounted the
latest lighter sensor which allows us to
erase the information about the trees so
that what remains is only what has been
modified by humans
Carla has already made Amazing
Discoveries with lidar
she hopes for more
she suspects that buried beneath the
jungle around the village of San Bartolo
are more traces of ancient settlements
she is looking for The Tell-Tale raised
Earth platforms created by ancient
peoples
that night when Carla and renan study
the 3D image of the rainforest around
San Bartolo their expectations are
surpassed when the vegetation is
Stripped Away they can clearly see that
the present-day Village is actually
built on an ancient human-made platform
so the platform looks rectangular 200
meters by 500 meters and about 3 meters
high and there are in fact two platforms
so there has probably been a community
where dionysia and her family live today
for a thousand years
it was one of the many small satellite
communities of the ancient Urban network
of the yanos de mojos
this existed right up to the time of the
arrival of Europeans in the 16th century
the end of the era of the ancient
amazonians
when did that era begin
until recently nobody was sure
but in the Colombian rainforest
extraordinary evidence of the arrival of
some of the first humans in Amazonia is
being found
archaeologist Gaspar morcote has made
the search for those first amazonians
his life's work
in an area of mountainous jungle called
La Serenia de la lindosa he and his team
have been finding traces of ancient
human activity everywhere
this is one of the oldest Pathways of
those first humans in the Amazon
rainforest
how does gas
were here
it's those early amazonians left behind
we found the traces they left
traces of Bones their food pieces of
fruit their fireplaces and their stone
tools
when gaspar's team radiocarbon dated
those traces
their age astonished him
they show that 12 600 years ago human
groups arrived in this area of the
jungle
it means that humans were here towards
the end of the last ice age
foreign
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shelters which were typical places those
first inhabitants of the Amazon used
and this is a type of soil which we can
read like a book
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it tells us the story of those first
inhabitants and all of the generations
that came after
that whole story is here
the story told by these soils is of the
nomadic hunter-gatherers who arrived
here over 12 000 years ago
some of the earliest confirmed evidence
of people in the Amazon
they use this rock shelter as a
temporary campsite
they didn't have potteries
they were nomadic groups who wandered
the jungle living for one they hunted
and the fruits they could gather
the tools and food remnants left by
those early amazonians tell Gaspar The
Story of their way of life but other
traces they left behind are much more
dramatic
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to reach them requires a journey by
river
aguayabero river is born in the high
Andes
its Waters squeeze between the high rock
walls of the Serenia de la lindosa
before flowing down into the jungle
scientists think that humans first came
into South America through the isthness
of Panama
to get into the Amazon some had to cross
the Andes and Gaspar believes that the
guayabero canyon provided those early
Travelers with a natural entry point
through the mountains and down into the
rainforest
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it was a Gateway through which those
first humans came down from the Andes
and started to colonize the Amazon basin
there is no way of knowing all the
different Pathways people took on their
way into the Amazon but dramatic
evidence reveals this was clearly a very
important one
because those ancient Travelers covered
the Cliffs of the low mountains of LA
lindosa with painted figures
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thousands of them
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it's a fabulous world that those ancient
people painted here
they represent the animals they live
with and the plants they live with
these figures capture the thoughts of
many groups over thousands of years
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some of the figures seem to represent
the magic and Shamanism of their rituals
but there are also geometric figures and
human figures
the ocher pigments contain iron oxide
minerals from the Earth
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even though their exact meaning is not
clear to Gaspar
he feels the paintings Express a
profound kinship with the natural world
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unlike us today who feel we are separate
from the jungle
those people were part of it along with
the rest of the animal and vegetable
world
just another being of the jungle
along with the figures of humans and
animals of today's rainforest like deer
tapers and jaguars there seem to be
animals that went extinct thousands of
years ago
it is a reminder of just how ancient
some of the paintings probably are
we are talking about 12 600 years ago at
that time there was a fauna that no
longer exists in South America
all of these animals left with humans up
until about 10 000 years ago when they
started to go extinct
animales so here we think there are
animals of the last ice age like the
giant sloth right behind me
the painted Cliffs of La lindosa open a
remarkable window on the lives and minds
of the first ice age amazonians
at their nearby habitation sites Gaspar
and his team have also discovered
evidence of how their lives changed over
the Millennia
the only tools the earliest nomadic
hunter-gatherers Left Behind Were Made
of Stone
this was their way of life up until
somewhere between four thousand and six
thousand years ago
about here at 70 centimeters down we
start to find the people with
agriculture
these are the people who domesticated
plants
in levels dating to less than 6 000
years ago Gaspar starts to find evidence
of manioc and Peach Palm cultivation
other research has shown that early
amazonians also planted cacao tobacco
papaya and Chili Peppers
work in the last 20 years has shown that
Amazonia is an independent Center of
plant domestication
is a great example
we know that the first experimentation
in domesticating it began eight or nine
thousand years ago
here in Amazonia
it is the same with cacao tobacco
coca and papaya
but how could early amazonians grow all
these crops
it has long been known that the soils of
the Amazon are naturally Sandy and
acidic
nutrients in the topsoil are absorbed by
the dense vegetation or leached away by
the constant rain
this is what led archaeologists to
believe intensive Agriculture and
therefore large populations were
impossible in Amazonia
when I came into the field it was widely
assumed that Amazonian soils were not
particularly fertile they were difficult
to work and would not provide the type
of productivity that could support large
populations based on agriculture
well we've come to realize that not only
are Amazonian agricultural systems very
diverse use a wide variety of crops
fruit trees but they also focused as
often as not on root crops rather than
seed crops like corn or wheat or rice
and it turns out that Maniac the primary
root crop actually does quite well in
Amazonian soils
but what about the other crops that
early amazonians planted like cacao
tobacco coca and papaya that require
more fertile and less acidic soils
by the banks of Brazil's Rio negro in
the Northwest Amazon a team of Western
and Indigenous archaeologists is
investigating the soils of an ancient
indigenous community
thank you
led by archaeologist Manuel Arroyo
Colleen they discover a thick layer of
dark Earth quite different from normal
jungle soils
it is a loose Rich Earth which is
fantastic for cultivating because it's
very fertile
in fact we are finding pieces of bone in
it which tell us that its pH is higher
more alkaline than usual in acid jungle
soils
it is probably close to pH neutral which
is why it preserves bone material much
better
this rich dark Earth is called Terra
preda and it does not exist naturally in
the Amazon
ancient people had to create it by
carefully composting Ash crushed bones
Pottery shards and vegetable refuse into
the soil around their communities
over Generations this transformed the
acidic jungle Sands and Clays into the
rich dark soil that could sustain
intensive agriculture
Tucano archeology student eurandir Da
Silva is fascinated by how his ancestors
created Tara preda
um
they transformed the soil according to
their needs
over many years turning refuse into the
soil
letting it decompose and then putting
more and more on top
and with time the tejaprita becomes
really fertile and productive
people still use it today for their
agriculture
it turns out human activities just basic
refuse activities and the upkeep of
houses and Villages incorporates
materials into the soil that make them
more fertile that make them more
suitable for agricultural production
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ancient amazonians clearly understood
the value of this composting
they used it to transform jungle soils
so that they could support intensive
Agriculture and large populations
this production strategies they were
good enough to keep the people living
together we're talking about hundreds or
thousands of people for a long time in
the same place
as well as creating fertile soils around
their communities ancient amazonians
also carefully managed the rainforest
thank you
they gathered certain trees like Peach
palm and Brazil nut in groves where they
could be visited occasionally and their
fruits harvested
to this day even very remote parts of
the Amazon bear the mark of this Ancient
Forest management
what Europeans imagined as pristine
Wilderness was in fact for Millennia a
semi-domesticated landscape
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what those people did was to propagate
certain species concentrating them in a
few places
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and so we see a jungle there is a mosaic
of species which is the product of their
work
what we see today is the fruit of human
actions that managed the forest without
destroying it
the latest research shows that the
landscape and much of the biodiversity
of the Jungle was created by the
indigenous community that lived here in
the past and still live here now
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more than 80 species of plants were
domesticated or semi-domesticated by
ancient amazonians
that process began about the same time
as the so-called Neolithic Revolution in
the Middle East
but it was very different and led to
different results
typically an archaeologist would say oh
these people they never really completed
the full Neolithic cycle they never
really became
fully formed Farmers but what archeology
tells us today is that that perspective
is not right that these people were
building their own histories based on a
different perspective on a different
logic
in the Middle East plant domestication
was based upon a handful of crops such
as wheat and barley
which could be easily stored
the accumulation of surpluses and the
development of huge irrigation systems
that had to be administered led to forms
of centralized political control
from these arose the first cities and
Empires
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in Amazonia it was different
the need for irrigation was minimal
the humid climate made storage and
surpluses impossible
so highly centralized Urban settlements
never developed
emerged were towns and chiefdoms with
populations in the tens of thousands but
not Grand cities and Empires
there was not just one ancient Amazonian
culture but many
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they appeared all along the Amazon River
itself
from the guyanas in the North
to the shingu in the south
all distinct all with their own unique
styles
one of the most remarkable is from the
high Jungle of Peru at a site called
Monte Grande
always the central point of the
scientists of the academy was that in
Amazonia there was no Monumental
architecture there was no evidence of
organized populations capable of
building Monumental architecture because
they thought they were just
hunter-gatherers
Peruvian archaeologist kirino Olivera
had always wondered about the strangely
symmetrical Mounds by the banks of the
maranion river a tributary of the upper
Amazon
they seemed natural
but could people have constructed them
in 2010 he started to excavate a similar
Mound on the outskirts of the nearby
town of hayen
it is the rainy season in the high
jungle so every night they must cover
the site to protect it then uncover it
the next morning
in 2010 we started archaeological
research on a mount that up until then
had been completely neglected
we had no idea that we were on the verge
of a discovery so important
kidino has been Excavating the site at
montegrande ever since
it is one of the most extraordinary and
baffling archaeological finds of recent
years
as we clear the way the top layers of
soil
we began to see stones in a circular
Arrangement
then platforms and Terraces began to
appear
that really surprised us it seemed
extraordinary
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as the full structure emerged their
surprise grew
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here was a massive pyramid as tall as a
five-story building constructed from
clay stone and Reed
with a mysterious Stone spiral built on
its Summit
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carbon 14 dates or even more astonishing
the pyramid was built over 5 000 years
ago even before the pyramids of Egypt
and Mesopotamia a time when
archaeologists had believed the Amazon
was populated only by hunter-gatherers
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the find is so important kidino has
invited famed Brazilian archaeologist
Eduardo Neves to visit
us
is of indigenous descent and celebrates
the occasion with an offering to the
bachamama goddess of the Earth
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to be here at Monte Grande for me it's
really like a dream fulfilled because
I've been teaching classes on South
American archeology for many years on
Amazonian archeology and of course I
know of kirino's work but being here is
a total different story you can have a
feeling about the power of the place
where it is located in this Valley
surrounded by the mountains this is a
very important site it's one of the most
important archeology sites that we have
in the Americas not only here in South
America
Monte Grande rewrites the history of
complex societies on the continent
for over a century when archaeologists
wrote about cities in high civilization
in South America they focused on
cultures like the Inca of the Andes or
the Nazca of the Pacific coast
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but here at montegrande is clear
evidence of a complex society and
Monumental architecture at least three
thousand years older than either the
Inca or Nazca
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if you compare the evidence for early
architecture of monumental architecture
of plant domestication we see a lot of
things happening before here in this
part of Peru in the Amazon not in the
course and not even the mountains so I
think it really brings it highlights the
importance that the place that Amazon
indigenous people had in the Deep
cultural history of this part of South
America
the excavation of an almost identical
but much smaller spiral pyramid in
Ecuador revealed a tomb this makes
kirino think De Monte Grande also is the
tomb of a religious leader
if he's right it would give meaning to
the mysterious spiral so carefully
constructed on top of it
is
the spiral is one of the most ancient
symbols in the history of humanity it
signifies the beginning and the end of
life the endless creation of one
generation from the preceding one is
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I am sitting at the center of the Spiral
architecture
and right beneath me in the spiral
Center would be the tomb of that high
status individual
s we believe that he is seated in a
fetal position
and from the center of his head the
spiral expands out like the axis Mundi
the axis of the cosmos yes
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this also probably had important
astronomical associations as in most
ancient societies who studied the night
sky the stars and Link them to life on
Earth
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in the beginning everything was in dark
there was no fire no light
the only one with fire was a being
called iwa
so before the world could begin our
ancestor had to steal fire from him
kidino believes montegrande embodies
profound beliefs about life death and
the cosmos
the creation story of today's awahoon
people does too is details of a
primordial time when people and animals
spoke to each other through their
Adventures the world was born
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the story is told by Eduardo ismino a
wahoo Elder and his wife of many years
Teresa
they live nearby and have often wondered
about the people who built montegrande
they don't feel related to them but are
impressed
so what does this place teach us
it's clear that in those times there was
no money
but there was hunting and fishing a lot
of it the people ate very well
there was a lot of solidarity these
required a lot of work a big communal
World they were living from hunting and
fishing and here there was a lot of
people children young people adults that
was in those times working together one
person could never do all this
Eduardo and Teresa are not the only ones
to Marvel at the achievements of the
ancient peoples of the Amazon
evidence of them is being found from the
Atlantic to the Andes
not hunter-gatherers living in a
tropical wilderness
but sophisticated cultures
the hidden history of the Lost
civilizations of the Amazon is being
Unearthed
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what happened to those ancient Amazonian
farmers and builders
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that within 100 Years of their first
contacts with Europeans about 80 percent
of the indigenous populations died
killed by epidemics of European diseases
to which they had no immunity
Violence by settlers and rubber tappers
killed even more
perhaps as many as 8 million people died
Urban complexes and agricultural systems
of Amazonia were reclaimed by the
rainforest
Europeans imagined was in fact a
landscape emptied of most of its former
inhabitants
today an estimated one and a half
million indigenous people live in the
Amazon
in 1492
there were many many more
in the scale of population in the Amazon
has been a question that has drawn a lot
of attention for a long time but overall
the estimates generally range today
between about 5 and 10 million people in
the Amazon basin
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construction brought about by the
conquest has given archeology's
exploration of the past extra relevance
to indigenous people
in the city of salgavriel De kashware on
the Rio negro in the Brazilian Amazon
indigenous archeology students are
learning their craft
I want to get involved with archeology
and I do it so I can learn the story of
my people
these days my people are interested in
reclaiming the history of our indigenous
tariano Community
Learning how we got from the past to
where we are now
and into the future
for me it was very important to do this
archeology Workshop
because it looks at the oranges of my
own people way back in time
archeology student or Daniel de Freitas
has been studying granite rocks in the
Rapids of the Rio negro
centuries before the conquest ancient
people carved mortars and grindstones in
them to sharpen their fish Spears
here we have a polisher and circular bow
here we have sharpening Stones
where the people sharpen their arrows
and spear points
oda's archaeological work has made her
think about the history of her people
a history almost erased by colonization
there has been a big impact in our
culture from the centuries of
colonization
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they're with archeology I feel we can
rescue and reconstruct our identity
our indigenous history rewards facts
like this
excuse me
I'm sorry
it's because those people were free they
were really free
my people suffered they disappeared
imagine how they were massacred sadly
that's the word they were massacred they
were raped
physically
psychologically emotionally
so that makes me sad to think about that
past for me it's very sad
the sadness Oda feels Echoes the tragedy
of indigenous people all over the
Americas
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archeology offers a reminder of what was
lost but some Amazonian people today
also feel that the recent discoveries
help establish their rights to the land
they have lived on for millennia
as their Forest is cut down for mining
cattle pasture and soy Fields many
indigenous people are turning to
archeology to support their cause
is an up-and-coming leader of a group
that has become iconic of indigenous
Amazonia
and the struggle for its preservation
today my people understand that
archeology is important
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every day we are being pressured by
ranchers and white people so we believe
that archeology and understanding our
history is part of our political
struggle
so archeology today is not just about
the past
it is bringing together scientists and
Indigenous people in a common cause
future of the Amazon I think that the
combination of this so-called scientific
approaches with this more politically
engaged archeology done you know the
decolonialized archeology done by
indigenous and non-indigenous people
it's going to make archeology more
powerful and more relevant and more
interesting
I think all of us have something very
important in our thinking which is our
commitment to indigenous communities
we are in difficult times in Amazonia
because it's being destroyed
this is what is bringing us together
thinking about how the past can help us
oppose the destruction which is now so
systematic in Amazonia
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the Revelation that for Millennia the
ancient Amazon was home to complex
civilizations is a reminder that
humanity and the rainforest can co-exist
they did for thousands of years
they can do so again
[Applause]
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those ancient human groups were not
detrimental to the forest on the
contrary they were managing the forests
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so this is a lesson a legacy for those
ancient humans have left us
they can teach us so much
let's see if we can learn from them
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foreign
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]