I thought the whole 'lost city in the Amazon' thing was just hype until I saw the lidar scans

Okay, so for years I'd hear about these stories of a huge ancient city hidden in the Amazon and I'd just roll my eyes. I mean, it sounded like something out of a movie, right? But then last month, I was reading a paper about new lidar work in the Upano area of Ecuador, and the images they released were crazy. It wasn't just a few mounds; the scans showed a whole network of roads and plazas connecting thousands of platforms over hundreds of square miles. The detail was so clear, showing how they shaped the landscape. That's what got me, it wasn't just one spot, it was a whole system. Seeing the actual data made it real in a way the news stories never did. Has anyone else had a find they totally doubted until the tech proof came out?

3 comments

3 Comments

mark_carr71d ago

Yeah, and it makes you wonder what else is still hidden under the canopy.

rose_reed1d ago

Actually, the Upano site is in Ecuador, not the Brazilian Amazon (that's a common mix-up). The lidar showed over 6,000 platforms across 115 square miles, which is still huge. It really does change how you see the whole region's history.

tara6421d ago

Look at the scale of those old cities, but it doesn't really change the big picture for me. Mark Carr7 has a point about hidden stuff, but finding big settlements just shows people built where they could. The Amazon's real history is still in the small, spread out groups that lived with the forest, not in copying how other places built. Those platforms are cool, but they feel like the exception, not the rule.