By recording beneath the forest canopy, the team documented 432 earthworks across southwestern Amazonia, 396 of them previously unknown. Combining these data with existing archaeological evidence, the authors conclude that the Aquiry cultural area — around 183,000 km² — may contain between 24,000 and 30,000 earthworks, as many as had previously been estimated for the whole Amazon basin.
The Tequinho geoglyph (Acre, Brazil) © Martti Pärsinnen
a, Piloto. b, D. Schaan. c, Fazenda Atlântica. d, amag34/Lid24_05_43a. e, Lid24_05_44a. f, Lid24_09_1b. Hillshading and colours are applied on digital terrain models; numbers in italics indicate relative elevation (metres above sea level) derived from those models.
The implications are profound. The study suggests that between AD 100 and 300, the Aquiry civilisation alone may have supported 1.25–3 million people, requiring us to rethink the scale, organisation and environmental impact of precolonial societies in Amazonia.
Technology expands what archaeology can ask; beyond documentation, it is an instrument of discovery. As recording technologies improve, landscapes long concealed beneath the forest canopy begin to reveal the evidence of sophisticated human societies, forcing us to rewrite long-held assumptions about our past.
The project was administered by the Instituto Iberoamericano de Finlandia and the Factum Foundation, with support from the Ibero-American Foundation (Finland) and American Friends of Factum Foundation. Primary funding was provided by E. Jhong, with additional support from the Research Council of Finland, the University of Helsinki Library and the Aarhus University Research Foundation.
