The Amazon may still have thousands of ancient structures beneath it: Study

Amazon rainforests in South America represent everything that's pristine. The 6.7 million square kilometres of greenery is a rich habitat of wildlife and one of the major carbon sinks in the world. As it allowed flaura and fauna to flourish, the Amazon also cradled human civilizations for thousands of years. Some of them like Inca, Nazca, Maya are long lost, but the architectural wonders they left behind in the region is testimony to the greatness of these proud and powerful empires.

But not all of the wonders of this bygone era have been found. And a new study says that evidence and traces of human influence dating back to thousands of years are still to be unearthed. These cultural treasures remain hidden beneath the greenery.

The study, published in the journal Science, and reported by ScienceAlert, has been carried out by remote-sensing scientist Vinicius Peripato along with his associates.

Watch | Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon falls 66% in August | WION Climate Tracker

He led a team of researchers from Brazil's National Institute for Space Research which investigated signs of earthworks in the Amazon using LIDAR data.

LIDAR is like a light-based radar system. When used from an aircraft, the system can penetrate through leaves, dirt to detect variations in structure beneath the surface. This may potentially reveal clues about hidden underground structures made by ancient humans, says the report.

Such structures have been found before of course. But the team was astonished when it realised that it had stumbled upon a large number of variations which may be human made structures.

In just single sweep, the team detected 24 previously unidentified disturbances in soil. This strongly implied that something of architectural origin was buried deep within.

"We detected a fortified village in southern Amazonia, defensive and ceremonial sites in southwestern Amazonia, crowned mountains and megalithic structures in the Guiana Shield, and riverine sites on flood plains in central Amazonia," says the research team,as reported by ScienceAlert.

These disturbances in soil can potentially reveal thousands of structures.

This leads to a mind-boggling possibility that 90 per cent of Amazon's history is yet to be uncovered, forget analysed and reported.

Uncovering these secrets may tell us how human settlements developed in the Amazons and flourished without threatening the very existence of the rainforest unlike modern times.

(With inputs from agencies)

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