🔦 Stéphane Rostain spent years excavating Ecuador’s Upano Valley, and 2024 research reveals an urban landscape at least 2,500 years old. Airborne lidar mapped more than 6,000 earthen platforms and a vast road network hidden beneath the forest. Some roads run dead straight and reach up to 13 metres wide; platforms surround plazas, while drainage works supported cultivation. Important caveat: the Upano pattern should not be generalized to the whole Amazon, because different communities built different landscapes. 🌿
Lidar mapping reveals a 2,500-year-old urban network in Ecuador's Upano Valley
EcuadorRemote Sensing
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Key facts
- Archaeologist Stéphane Rostain investigated the Upano Valley for years, excavating platforms, pottery and traces of domestic life
- Research published in 2024 describes an urban landscape in the valley dating to at least 2,500 years ago
- Airborne lidar mapped more than 6,000 earthen platforms connected by an extensive road and settlement network
- Some roads run straight across the terrain and reach up to 13 metres wide
- Platforms were arranged around open plazas, while drainage works supported cultivation
- The video cautions against extending the Upano pattern to the entire Amazon basin because different communities built different landscapes
Sources
Valley of lost cities that flourished 2000 years ago found in ...theguardian.com
This Lidar image shows complexes of rectangular platforms distributed along wide dug streets at the Kunguints site, Upano Valley, in Ecuador. ...
Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 ...science.org
A dense network of interconnected cities, now hidden beneath the forest in Ecuador's Upano Valley, has been revealed by the laser mapping ...
Archaeologists Discover Ancient Cities Hidden in the ...smithsonianmag.com
Located in Ecuador's Upano Valley, Ecuadorean government employed lidar—a remote sensing technology ・ landscape using lasers—that ・ ancient ...
Deep in the Amazon, researchers have uncovered a ...cbc.ca
Using the laser-scanning technology, researchers have uncovered a complex network of farmland, roads and neighbourhoods in Ecuador's Upano River ...
Why the ancient Amazonian cities recently discovered in ...theartnewspaper.com
Researchers using the laser mapping technology Lidar have revealed a vast, urban complex of more than 6,000 earthen platforms in Ecuador's Upano ...
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