Geoglyphs, hidden by trees for centuries, reveal the existence of an ancient civilization.
Two decades ago, in the heart of Brazil, deforestation uncovered hundreds of geoglyphs that had remained hidden for centuries by trees, and which showed the existence of an ancient civilization, with a very advanced cultural and technological development.
The first geoglyphs were discovered in 1977. However, after 20 years of work in the field, the Finnish archaeologist Martti Pärssinen demonstrated, together with the Brazilian paleontologist and geographer Alceu Ranzi, that it is an ancient Amazonian culture that they called Aquiry, and that inhabited the Acre region between 700 BC and 900 AD.
During its period of greatest splendour, approximately 1,900 years ago, it became one of the great civilizations of the American continent, with more than a million inhabitants, although hardly any archaeological remains have been found beyond these ceremonial centers in the form of geoglyphs and the road network that connected them.
The discovery of this ancient civilization has revolutionized the perception of the world's largest rainforest, forcing us to rethink many concepts about it; not only historical ones, but also those related to the impact of climate change.
Pärssinen, who is also an internationally recognized anthropologist and historian, talked about the Aquiry civilization last week at an event, saying: "Until recently, in the 1990s, archaeologist Betty Meggers, who was an authority at the Smithsonian Institution in the United States, said that in the entire Amazon there lived between one and two million people in pre-Columbian times, but now we have studied an area that represents between 2 percent and 3 percent of the total surface, and we have already found almost the same. When we consider that we still have 97 percent unexplored, I am quite sure that this figure is going to increase a lot, especially when LiDAR technology develops further, becomes cheaper and all archaeologists can use it."
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