LIDAR-Scan Entdeckte Unbekannte Zivilisation im Amazonasgebiet

For centuries, it was believed that the Amazon rainforest was a huge, untouched area of natural wilderness, in which only a few tiny indigenous tribes have ever lived. However, new research has shown that this long-standing belief is wrong, that the Amazon is actually not an untouched wilderness, but was once the home of a monumental ancient civilization, which is completely absent in the history books. What we are now learning about this lost civilization does not only completely change our understanding of human history, but may also have the power to change the future of humanity as we know it. Make yourself comfortable. In this video, we will show you exactly what archaeologists have discovered and what that means for humanity. The story begins with a man named Francisco de Orellana. Orellana was born in a wealthy and influential Spanish family in 1511 and received a position as conquistador in the new world of Central and South America in 1527, where he strived for fame and wealth for more than a decade. In 1540, Orellana decided to join a dangerous expedition, which was to lead from Peru to the interior of the country to find the rich civilizations of which the conquistadors believed that they existed in the heart of the South American continent. The expedition broke out in February 1541 and to say that it did not go well would be an understatement. For months, the expedition traveled over the dangerous Andes and down into the oppressive jungle, without ever coming across signs of a large-scale civilization. In December, the expedition leader was desperate, his group was starving and ill, and so Orellana was sent out with a group of 50 men to explore the area along the Coca River and look for food. When they came across a friendly tribe a few days downstream, who were camped there, where the Coca met the Napo, Orellana was determined to return and inform the main group, but the other members of his group insisted that a return to the upstream would be too difficult and threatened to kill each other if they did not continue. Since Orellana had no other choice, he agreed. His group followed the Napo River until it led into a much larger river in early 1542, a mighty reservoir that was later known as the Amazon. For months they traveled along the mighty Amazon, and the amazing places they came across were recorded by a Dominican monk named Gaspar de Carvajal. In his records, Carvajal described huge settlements that stretched for miles along the river, including one, as he put it, that stretched for more than five hours, about 20 to 32 kilometers, without there being any room from house to house in between. Between these settlements, there were beautiful roads that stretched inland and were so huge that Orellana and his group were afraid to follow them. The amazing foods that these settlements enjoyed were particularly remarkable. A abundance of meat, turkeys, trout and all kinds of fish, as well as pineapples and avocados, plums and pudding apples and other types of fruit, and even very good wine that tasted like beer. Finally, more than six months after they had reached the Amazon and a year and a half since their departure from Peru, Orellana and his group left the east coast of the Amazon and sailed into the Atlantic Ocean. When Orellana returned to Europe, the incredible stories he told about his journey immediately made him an important figure. In 1544, he was appointed governor of the new territory and was entrusted with the task of conquering and settling the country. Unfortunately for Orellana, the return journey was a disaster, and despite months of hiking on the Brazilian coast, he did not manage to find the mouth of the Amazon. When he had lost his hope, he died in 1546, without ever having returned to the great river. What was surprising was that, after Orellana's death, no larger expeditions to the Amazon were organized for a while. Only at the end of the 16th century did Jesuit missionaries to penetrate the area and build settlements. They did not find the civilization Orellana had spoken of. No large population, no houses stretching for miles, no huge country roads cutting through the terrain. There was only jungle and small, sparse groups of indigenous tribes. Shortly afterwards, there was a consensus that Orellana must have been a liar. The Amazon, which he described, was nothing more than a false paradise. This consensus was only strengthened in the 20th century, when scientists found that the soil of the Amazon rainforest was unfruitful and completely unsuitable for large-scale agriculture. In other words, the large populations and incredible food that Orellana described simply could not exist. And so the opinion was established that the Amazon was really an unexplored and untouched wilderness. Until everything changed in recent years. At the end of 1992, an American anthropologist named Michael Heckenberger decided to spend a little vacation in the region of Mato Grosso in the Amazon Basin in Brazil. Although he was an anthropologist, he did not intend to expect anything dramatic on this special trip, but simply wanted to spend a nice time with the indigenous tribes of the region. In January 1993, he settled down at a tribe, the Kuikuro, where the tribe's chief, Heckenberger, recognized him as an educated man and quickly told him that there was a place he had to see. Since he had nothing better to do, Heckenberger followed the chief to the city, where he was shown a huge trench, which was about 1.80 m to 3 m deep and more than 9 m wide and stretched over 1.5 km. Heckenberger started to rummage around the earth and suddenly it became clear to him that it was filled with small clay shards. Where did this ceramic come from, he asked himself. Heckenberger could not resist and decided to cancel the rest of his vacation and initiate an official investigation of the place. It was a good thing he did. Shortly afterwards, it became clear to him that he had come across something amazing. The huge trench that had been shown to him was just a small part of a series of earthworks and ancient cities that stretched over the entire region, of which many, in Heckenberger's words, were much larger than today's settlements. What kind of finds were these? Did anyone in the past live there in larger numbers than today's indigenous tribes? Heckenberger had to know. And so he set out to map and excavate locations all over Mato Grosso. He worked for 10 years until he finally published his results in Science in 2003. Surprisingly, Heckenberger had discovered no less than 19 settlements that appeared every 3 to 5 km in the entire area. These settlements were connected by roads with a width of up to 50 m, the width of a modern four-lane motorway, which, according to Heckenberger, were arranged in the same angles and formed a cluster in the entire region. Even more incredible was that the study showed that the area between the settlements was carefully farmed and intentionally divided into fruit gardens and agricultural fields. It seemed that between the settlements and the roads, the farms and the fruit gardens, the entire area was used and closed. As Heckenberger expressed it, nothing is unconnected. The whole damn landscape is connected to each other. Based on his findings, Heckenberger estimated that between 2,500 and 5,000 people lived in the settlements. Since carbon datings reduced their use to the time between 800 and 1,600 AD, this meant that they were as large as many European cities at the same time. But how could the remains of these settlements remain hidden for so long, even though generations of researchers and archaeologists traveled through the area? Heckenberger had a simple answer. The inhabitants of these settlements had used clay bricks and wood instead of stones that were not available in the area. This meant that they quickly disappeared in the tropical climate and were lost underground. No one had noticed, because there may not have been much to notice. In fact, Heckenberger himself, without the instructions of the tribe chief, may never have started his work. It was an amazing discovery that showed that there were once more people in the region than had been accepted for a long time. But in reality, this was just the beginning. At the same time as Heckenberger worked, something else happened that further resolved the growing mystery. In 1999, a Brazilian paleontologist named Alceu Ranzi flew over the state of Acre in Brazil. About 2,600 kilometers west of Mato Grosso, when he noticed huge earthquakes down on the ground that had apparently dug into the terrain. Somewhere in his head, Ranzi was already aware of the existence of these earthquakes. In the 1970s, when Ranzi was hardly more than a freshly baked geography student, he was part of a team led by the researcher Onde Madeirsch, which carried out a comprehensive archaeological investigation of the Acre area. At that time, the Amazon rainforest had just been released for agriculture. And when agriculture was released into the jungle, Madeirsch and his team drew the existence of huge shapes and patterns on the earth. Although these earthquakes were mysterious and fascinating, the results attracted little attention. In fact, the National Program for Archaeological Research in Brazil, which commissioned the project, was not even known for 11 years. But in 1999, Ranzi himself became a respected scientist. And when he was reminded of the earthquakes from the window of his plane, this again aroused his interest in the cities. Ranzi decided to study them and find out what they were and where they came from. Within a year, he had discovered dozens of earthworks in the entire region. Circles and routes, hexagons, interlocking rectangles and more. Each with a diameter between about 90 and 300 meters. And with up to a depth that was surrounded by up to 6 meter deep graves. Many were even to be reached via wide earth alleys, which were 50 meters wide and about 800 meters long. For Ranzi, it was clear that these earthworks, which he and others called geoglyphs, had been built by people on a large scale sometime in the past. But by whom? And when? The question brought researchers from all over the world to Acre, to start an intensive study. In 2010, they were finally ready to publish a report on their work. According to the report, which appeared in the journal Antiquity, researchers had discovered more than 200 geoglyphs, which stretched over 240 kilometers, from Bolivia in the south, across Acre to the state of Amazonas in the north. Incredibly, these geoglyphs were connected by long, straight roads, which gave the landscape the appearance of a geometric grid drawn into the earth. Researchers dated the geoglyphs to the year 1283 AD and already to the year 200 AD, in both cases long before the arrival of the Europeans on the continent. This once again showed that the long-standing consensus that the Amazonas was never the home of noteworthy population groups was wrong. In fact, according to the size of the geoglyphs, researchers estimated that possibly up to 60,000 people lived in the area. As incredible as that was, the researchers insisted that they had only just begun scratching the surface. In fact, one of the leading researchers claimed in interviews that he had only found 10% of what was actually there, while another said the opposite of National Geographic. There is much more to discover in these places. It is endless. We find new buildings every week. As predicted, after 2010, researchers found more and more geoglyphs throughout the region. By 2015, 306 geoglyphs had been found in Acre, and by 2017 there were almost 500. And then the game changed. At the end of the 2010s, a new technology came onto the market that revolutionized archaeology. It was called Light Detection and Ranging, or LIDAR. Simply put, LIDAR fires a network of infrared laser beams into the ground, hundreds of thousands per second. When these beams are reflected by the earth's surface, they generate data points from which the terrain can be digitally mapped, making the earth's surface immediately visible due to its archaeological features. Unfortunately, nowhere was it more important for archaeologists than in the Amazon, where the dense jungle makes it almost impossible to see anything from the air. And it is extremely difficult to cross it on foot. With LIDAR, researchers were actually able to dig up the Amazon digitally. And so huge areas could be explored within days or even minutes, whose investigation would have taken years with conventional methods. Suddenly, LIDAR meant that what was really hidden in the Amazon became visible to the world. The first major breakthrough came in 2018 in the Brazilian region of Mato Grosso, where Michael Hagenberger had become a legend decades before because of his work on site. There, researchers were able to discover 81 geoglyphs near the border between Bolivia and Brazil with the help of LIDAR, and begin excavations in a selection of the 24 most fascinating places. In doing so, they discovered a complex series of interconnected road networks and farms, which stretched between large, built on hills, fortified villages. In these villages, there were dams and large squares. And as researchers dug into the soil, they found ceramic remains and tombs. On the surface, the works in 2018 were no different from those Michael Hagenberger had already done, albeit in a much larger area and in a much shorter time. However, there was one feature that made them different and really groundbreaking. The found sites were far from large rivers, which were thought to have been used by people. This meant that an old civilization not only existed along the river bank, but in fact a continuous series of settlements in the entire region and deep into the jungle. With this information, the researchers were able to create a computer model together with the already existing data, which the entire population of the region appreciated. Incredibly, this model showed that the population in the region must have been between 500,000 and 1 million people at its peak. This was an amazing result, which dramatically increased the population estimates in the Amazon and the ideas about the civilization that lived there. But Mato Grosso was not the only region where such dramatic changes took place. Back in Acre, where hundreds of geoglyphs had already been found, it unfortunately enabled the researchers to finally put the puzzle pieces together. In a study published in the Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology in 2020, researchers discovered that the geoglyphs and villages found on the ground all revolved around a series of hills, which were connected to each other by rays-shaped roads. In the study, it is said that the circle-shaped hill villages are connected to each other by pairs of hollow roads with high banks that look like the markings of a clock or the rays of the sun from the village circle. The construction was so amazing that the researchers came to the conclusion that it could have been organized specifically to represent indigenous ideas of the cosmos. The discoveries in Mato Grosso forced the researchers to re-examine the population of the Amazon. The discoveries in Acre forced the researchers to re-imagine what this population was capable of back then. How did they build such a complex grid that looked like a work of art from the air? When researchers thought about this question, another breakthrough succeeded. This is the most breathtaking of all. A place that we have not mentioned so far is the remote region of Janos de Mojos in Bolivia, which is located in the southwestern corner of the Amazon basin between Acre and Mato Grosso. As with the neighbors on both sides, archaeological excavations on site in the area have promoted unusual cities to date, including hills that rise up to 20 meters above the landscape, as well as hundreds of kilometers of dams and canals. But the area was so remote and so densely overgrown with jungle that these peculiarities were never really pursued in the same way as in other regions. And since incredible discoveries were made elsewhere, Janos de Mojos was mostly ignored. It was not until 2022 that the shocking secrets of the region were finally revealed. This year, a group of archaeologists from Germany, Great Britain and Bolivia published a study in the journal Nature under the direction of a man named Heiko Promers, who put the scientific world at ease. With the help of Leida, Promers and his team had discovered 26 unique settlement sites in the region. Among them, what is most spectacular, two large urban centers. These two urban centers, known as Landevar and Kutuka, were each arranged around a monumental core that contained huge, elevated earth platforms on which huge conical pyramids stood, each surrounded by three rings of defense systems and city walls. These centers were simply much larger and more impressive than anything that existed before in Acre or Mato Grosso. But there was more. In the surroundings of Landevar and Kutuka, there was an extensive network of smaller settlements that stretched over 500 square kilometers and was connected by roads and dams. Endless canals and reservoirs stretched across the entire network, a proof of a progressive hydrological system that could have been used to control water supply throughout the area. In contrast to earlier finds in Acre or Mato Grosso, where smaller settlements were roughly grouped, here it was a whole urban area that was centered around a system of large city centers and suburbs. As the researchers described in the study, the settlement pattern represents a kind of tropical urbanism with low density, which had not been described in the Amazon before. In other words by Heiko Brumers, no one expected such a society in this region, 20 meters high pyramids. The entire region was so densely populated in pre-Spanish times that it is incredible. There is a new civilization, a new culture that is waiting for us to study it. This tremendous discovery implied something that no one had expected. As Brumers explained, we can now see that the general estimates for the population of the Amazon were too low, far too low. But everything at these sites, the size of the large settlements, the reservoirs, the defense systems, the highly developed infrastructure, all point to large populations. But 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 civilization of the Amazon. The most frequently cited estimate today assumes that between 6 and 9 million people lived in the Amazon at its peak, while others say that it was certainly over 10 million and some even assume that it could have been up to 20 million. For comparison, when Francisco de Orellana traveled down the Amazon for the first time, 6.5 million people lived in Spain. However, these estimates have destroyed everything that anyone in the region would have thought possible. In just a few years, the population estimate rose from thousands to tens of thousands, then to one million, then to millions. Isn't it likely that the number will continue to rise in the future? Prumas believes that it could rise. In his words, I am sure that in the next 10 or 20 years we will see many of these cities, and some even bigger than those we imagine in our magazine. Take a step back. We now know that the long-term view of mainstream science is wrong and officially contradicted. In fact, there was a huge civilization in the Amazon region, as Francisco de Orellana originally reported. After this has finally been clarified, the question arises, what happened to them? If the reports about Orellana in the 16th century were true, why did future discoverers find nothing there, neither a huge civilization, nor even the remains of one? The prevailing answer is tragic. When the Europeans arrived in South America for the first time, they brought diseases such as pox and flu, which decimated the indigenous population, because they had no defenses against them. Estimates assume that between the 16th and 18th centuries, 90% of the population of South America, perhaps even 99%, was eliminated by diseases. If you understand this, the explanation for why no great civilizations were found is quite simple. The once million-strong population of this civilization was eliminated in the course of only a few generations. When the people disappeared, the jungle began to take over the places where they lived and to cover their cities. Since they built from clay bricks and wood instead of stone, the evidence of their existence disappeared quickly and were lost under the jungle earth. When the Europeans began to explore the area more thoroughly one and a half centuries after the first trip to Orellana, there was nothing more to find, which led them to the conclusion that the civilization never existed. There is another question, which results from the final proof that there were large populations in the Amazon before the arrival of the Europeans. Think about the fact that modern science has shown that bad soils in the Amazon region cannot allow large-scale agriculture. How did this Amazon civilization feed a million-strong population? The secret is something called terra preta, a nearly mystical discovery, which not only explains the civilization of the Amazon, but could also 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. In Portuguese, terra preta, literally black earth, it was in stark contrast to the normal orange-yellow soil of the Amazon, not only because of its color, but also because of its extreme fertility. The knowledge of these terra preta was first known in the West by a report by the discoverer Herbert Smith from 1879, which appeared in the popular magazine Scribner's Monthly. There Smith wrote, The sugar cane field itself is a wonderful sight. The palms are three meters high in many places and as large as a wrist. The secret was the rich terra preta. Despite incredible reports like this, no one really thought to deal with terra preta, because it was believed to be hardly more than another myth. But when scientists in the middle of the 20th century finally came to investigate it, it quickly became clear to them that it was basically a magical soil. In the terra preta soil, scientists found plenty of organic material, such as plant remains, animal skin, fish and animal bones, as well as tiny clay shards. In addition, the soil contains unusually high concentrations of low-temperature wood-coal residues and extremely high amounts of nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium and zinc, as well as a high level of micro-organic activity. Somehow, these properties came together and gave the soil breath-taking properties. First of all, the soil was not only much more fertile than normal, but it also somehow retained its nutrient content for generations to come. Consider that the modern arboriculture in the Amazon region is not sustainable, because the nutrients from the soil are washed out by strong precipitation after the land is plowed. Even with modern chemical fertilizers, the normal Amazon soil cannot maintain the harvest yields until the third vegetative period. And yet terra preta remains fertile year after year. How unusual that is, explained a biochemist at Cornell University. The soils retain their high fertility in an environment with high decomposition, humidity and high temperatures. According to textbooks, these soils do not exist. Furthermore, it was found that terra preta somehow regenerates itself, almost as if it were alive, which means that it can actually increase its own volume and turn poor soil into very fertile soil. The most interesting thing is that although modern science has grasped these properties, it has not yet managed to find out how terra preta was produced by indigenous populations. And don't think you haven't tried it. In recent years, enormous investments have been made to uncover the secrets of terra preta. Because, well, it could save the modern world. Think about it. If scientists could find out how the extremely fertile terra preta can be reproduced, crop yields around the globe could be increased. Especially in areas that are difficult to farm, with poor soil, without the toxic effects of fertilizers and sodas, to feed a modern world. One billion people are currently affected by food insecurity. In addition, it has been shown that the high carbon content of terra preta binds considerable amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, which is why it is so difficult to find it. What modern science should be most frustrated about is the fact that new research has shown that the inhabitants of the Amazon not only knew how to produce terra preta, but that they did so in large quantities. As more and more settlements were discovered throughout the Amazon region, terra preta was found all around the cities. Research has shown that it could cover 3.2% of the entire area of the Amazon. Simply put, the former inhabitants of the Amazon created and used terra preta as the basis of their huge civilization. The secret that enabled them to feed a million people. But if terra preta was the basis, it actually went much further. In recent years, research has shown that the rainforest of the Amazon is not just an untouched wilderness, but in reality a huge garden. Seriously. Studies have shown that the early inhabitants of the Amazon domesticated and cultivated certain plants for thousands of years. Today, plants such as the paranus tree, and the cocoa tree are the ideal plants for the nutrition of a flourishing civilization in the Amazon, which is super-dominant. The reason for this is that the Amazon civilization carefully cultivated them to ensure their wealth. When the majority of the population died of diseases after the arrival of the Europeans, these dominant plants simply ran amok in the tropical climate of the rainforest that we know today. Put together, this leads to an incredible conclusion. Before the arrival of the Europeans, there was not only a huge and flourishing civilization in the Amazon, but also one that did things in a completely different way. While their pendants in Europe quickly exhausted the fertility of their own country and invested enormous resources to achieve the same in new places, the inhabitants of the Amazon developed a kind of sustainable fertility. As a researcher who worked in this area expressed it, these people did something that we were apparently not very successful at, namely preserving the populations without destroying the biodiversity. As another researcher expressed it, what we see in the Amazon region is not so much culture versus nature, but rather a dispute between two different forms of human occupation. One that makes the earth bleed out and leads to this miserable situation in which we are today, and the other that increases the fertility and sustainability as well as the habitability of the planet. We now follow the secrets of the Amazon terra preta soil, whose discovery could completely change our modern world. But this is just one secret that has long been lost in the Amazon region. What else could we learn if the rest of the more than 5 million square kilometers that are still covered by the jungle is explored? If new locations are found and excavated by LiDAR? We have just added a completely new civilization to the list. There is hardly any doubt that we will gain a new understanding of the history of mankind and perhaps even the future of mankind through your study. Would you like to learn more about recently discovered, long-lost civilizations and what they could mean for the future of mankind? Take a look at our video about Nan Madol, an ancient city built by giants. Once again, thank you for staying until the end. If you liked our research and the videos we created, we are very happy about a like. And share this video in the social media. 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