Thanks to remote sensing equipment, experts have discovered an ancient landscape of mounded villages in the Amazon. The ancient villages, which could only be seen below the rainforest canopy, were laid out like a clock face. These mounded villages were estimated to have been built between 1300 and 1700 AD:
This is further evidence the rainforest has long-been occupied by indigenous communities, whose cultures rose, fell, transformed, and rose again, long before Europeans made an impact in the Americas. The research shows after the abandonment of the large geometrically patterned ceremonial earthworks, around AD 950, a new culture arose with communities living in mounded villages with highly defined concepts of social and architectural space.
The circular mound villages are connected across the wider landscape through paired sunken roads with high banks that radiate from the village circle like the marks of a clock or the rays of the sun. The villages have both minor roads and principal roads, which were deeper and wider with higher banks. Most villages have paired cardinally orientated principal roads, two leaving in a northward direction and two leaving in a southward direction. The survey reveals that the straight roads often connect one village to another, creating a network of communities over many kilometers.
Image via Phys.org
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What ? The Amazon is laid out like a clock face ?All my years of schooling, ... you know, learning how to write, et cetera, seem to have been wasted, as I was never taught that the Amazon is laid out like a clock face.
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