China News Service, Beijing, May 26 (Reporter Sun Zifa) An archaeological paper recently published in the internationally renowned academic journal "Nature" stated that researchers have discovered 11 previously unknown sites of Casarabe cultural residences in the southwestern Amazon. Existed around 500-1400 AD.
These findings demonstrate a tropical low-density urbanity previously unknown in the Amazon, suggesting that the western Amazon was not as sparsely populated as previously thought in pre-Hispanic times.
The paper says that because tropical forests are difficult to map due to the dense vegetation, what is known about the Casarabe culture, which developed in the Amazon between AD 500-1400, is limited to some evidence from individual sites.
As a result, little is known about the public-ceremonial architecture of important sites and the regional organization of Casarabe settlements.
Corresponding author of the paper, Heiko Prümers of the German Institute of Archaeology, in collaboration with colleagues and international colleagues, surveyed six areas of the 4,500-square-kilometer Llanos de Mojos plain in the Amazon region of Bolivia. The area belongs to the Casarabe culture.
Using a technology called Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging), they can virtually "erase" dense vegetation to visualize land and archaeological remains under the canopy.
They found two settlements, named Cotoca and Landívar, and 24 smaller sites, of which only 15 were previously known to exist.
Based on factors such as the size of the rammed earth platform, the building structure on it, and the water storage system of the river, the author of the paper generated a four-level classification of the site.
The structures include U-shaped structures, rectangular platform stacks and conical pyramids up to 22 meters high.
In the "News and Views" article published concurrently in "Nature", colleagues from Colorado State University in the United States believe that the findings of the latest study challenge the existing understanding of the history of the pre-Hispanic period in the Amazon region and improve people's understanding of the ancient Amazonian tropical civilization. understanding.
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