I played at being Hiram Bingham on his famous expeditions, and whiled away many an hour reading books on the Aztecs and Inca, and outlining the plot of my never-written historical novel set in the last days of Machu Picchu. There is also something incredibly sad and melancholy in this discovery. It is unnerving to think that a large, sophisticated civilization can be, not just destroyed, but so utterly lost and forgotten that the only remnants of its physical existence are some mounds in the rainforest, and apparently no remnant survived at all of its sciences, its technologies, its learning and knowledge. In fact, this vast civilization was replaced by scattered tribes of primitive nomads. When one ponders the implications of such a drastic upheaval, it is quite sobering. I've often wondered if, in time beyond human record, there was a point at which our current level of technological development was equalled or perhaps even surpassed, but by some cataclysmic event we were returned to a primitive state and all such knowledge was lost. Finds like this one seem to at least give some credence to the possibility.
I'm reminded of these passages in the Qur'an:
"For every nation will be an allotted time; when their time is reached, they will not delay by one moment nor advance it."
"These are some of the stories of the communities which We relate to you; some are still standing and some have been wiped out. We did not wrong them, but they wronged themselves. Their gods that they called on besides God did not rescue them at all when your Lord's command came, and they only added to their destruction. Such is the taking of your Lord when He takes the towns while they are wicked. His taking is painful, severe."
In all humility::
Allah'u'abha, Allah'u'abha, Allah'u'abha.
"Satellite technology detects giant mounds over 155 miles, pointing to sophisticated pre-Columbian culture...
It is the legend that drew legions of explorers and adventurers to their deaths: an ancient empire of citadels and treasure hidden deep in the Amazon jungle.
Spanish conquistadores ventured into the rainforest seeking fortune, followed over the centuries by others convinced they would find a lost civilisation to rival the Aztecs and Incas.
Some seekers called it El Dorado, others the City of Z. But the jungle swallowed them and nothing was found, prompting the rest of the world to call it a myth. The Amazon was too inhospitable, said 20th century scholars, to permit large human settlements.
Now, however, the doomed dreamers have been proved right: there was a great civilisation. New satellite imagery and fly-overs have revealed more than 200 huge geometric earthworks carved in the upper Amazon basin near Brazil's border with Bolivia.
Spanning 155 miles, the circles, squares and other geometric shapes form a network of avenues, ditches and enclosures built long before Christopher Columbus set foot in the new world. Some date to as early as 200 AD, others to 1283.
Scientists who have mapped the earthworks believe there may be another 2,000 structures beneath the jungle canopy, vestiges of vanished societies.
The structures, many of which have been revealed by the clearance of forest for agriculture, point to a "sophisticated pre-Columbian monument-building society", says the journal Antiquity, which has published the research.
The article adds: "This hitherto unknown people constructed earthworks of precise geometric plan connected by straight orthogonal roads. The 'geoglyph culture' stretches over a region more than 250km across, and exploits both the floodplains and the uplands … we have so far seen no more than a tenth of it."
The structures were created by a network of trenches about 36ft (nearly 11 metres) wide and several feet deep, lined by banks up to 3ft high. Some were ringed by low mounds containing ceramics, charcoal and stone tools. It is thought they were used for fortifications, homes and ceremonies, and could have maintained a population of 60,000 – more people than in many medieval European cities.
The discoveries have demolished ideas that soils in the upper Amazon were too poor to support extensive agriculture, says Denise Schaan, a co-author of the study and anthropologist at the Federal University of Pará, in Belém, Brazil. She told National Geographic: "We found this picture is wrong. And there is a lot more to discover in these places, it's never-ending. Every week we find new structures.""
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