Amazon ‘Lost Cities’: LIDAR Reveals Widespread Pre-Columbian Urban Networks

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Key facts

• The Amazon rainforest covers about 5.5 million square kilometres, roughly 40% of South America; 7 million square kilometres is closer to the area of the Amazon basin.
• LiDAR surveys have documented extensive pre-Hispanic, low-density urbanism in Ecuador’s Upano Valley and Bolivia’s Amazon lowlands.
• The video argues that some mapped settlements could have held more than one million people, comparable to Rome; the published LiDAR studies do not establish that population estimate.
• Documented features include roads and causeways, raised platforms, mounds, reservoirs, agricultural features and geometric earthworks. The cited studies do not establish monumental ‘highways,’ step pyramids or astronomical observatories as general features of these sites.
• Francisco de Orellana recorded settlements along the Amazon during his 1541 voyage; his account is not evidence for a million-person city.
• The supplied archaeological sources do not corroborate the specific 1753 Portuguese document and its description of a gated city with stone houses, temples and paved roads.
• Percy Fawcett’s search for the Lost City of Z is a separate historical episode and does not validate the LiDAR population claim.
• Terra preta is ancient human-made fertile soil used for agriculture, with dates varying by site; it is separate evidence and does not substantiate the million-person-city claim.
• Archaeological research supports repeated growth, decline and reorganisation of Amazonian communities before European contact.

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