In school, we are accustomed to studying history – and to some extent geography – as if Europe were the center of the world, the focal point from which to look at everything else, when time allows, at the end of the year. This, along with all our inherent cognitive biases (which have long influenced studies themselves), leads us to develop the more or less unconscious belief that Western civilization was the only ancient civilization. Of course, that is not the case.

Today, thanks to LiDAR technology ((Light Detection and Ranging) developed in recent years and field surveys, after almost thirty years of research in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest, a team of archaeologists led by the Frenchman Stéphen Rostain from CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) has just discovered a network of ancient cities inhabited between approximately 500 B.C. and 300-600 A.D.

LiDAR, with its ability to penetrate clouds and forest cover to analyze the Earth's surface in detail (commonly used for prospecting mineral deposits), had already led several groups of scholars to confidently assert that the entire Amazon region hosted complex civilizations. Focusing on the Upano Valley, a river that originates near Atillo in the Andes, Rostain and his team identified an anthropized landscape with groups of monumental platforms, plazas, and streets following a well-defined and intertwined pattern with extensive agricultural drainages and terraces.

But the even more significant discovery is that this dense system of urban centers appears to be connected by a complex road system, extending over tens of kilometers with wide straight roads, giving rise to a true regional-scale transportation network. Similar urban systems have recently been detected in the Mayan civilizations of Mexico and Guatemala. At the moment, the Upano civilization seems to be the oldest agrarian society in the Amazon, but many more discoveries are likely to follow.

Foto in copertina di Dayan Quinteros su Unsplash.