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- Hacker News
- It’s so crazy that they all just… died because of the old world diseases before anyone really got a chance to meet them as a civilization.by dyauspitr
- Has anyone else noticed the shape and order of these settlements indicates they engaged in siege warfare?by ryanmarsh
- There’s an incredible story about Orellana, who captained the first journey down the Amazon River in the 1500’s with Gaspar de Carvajal taking notes. They described cities of hundreds of thousands of people, and sailing for days going through city after city.
Decades later people tried to repeat the journey and didn’t find major cities, ultimately calling Carvajal a liar. The reality was everyone died due to new diseases. It’s hard to imagine the impact disease had on South America in particular
by guywithahat - I recommend the book 1491 by Charles C. Mann to those of you who find this interesting. I loved it!
From wikipedia: > The book presents recent research findings from different fields which suggest human populations in the Western Hemisphere—that is, the Indigenous peoples of the Americas—were more numerous, had arrived earlier, were more sophisticated culturally, and controlled and shaped the natural landscape to a greater extent than scholars had previously thought.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A...
by cambaceres - This article linked in the posted one is even better when it comes to “the whole picture”
https://www.science.org/content/article/unearth-their-past-a...
by jgilias - Amazonian civilization now has an estimated 1M people in 0.3% of warehouse area.by userbinator
- Originally heard about this via Nature podcast's interview with the researcher: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02367-x
This is a continuation of many findings in this direction. It's wonderful to imagine the many societies humans have created, and sad that we'll be able to learn so little about them.
by marojejian - The myth of the 'pristine, untouched Amazon' was always a European trope. Lidar is proving that ancient civilizations were sophisticated ecosystem engineers, shaping the rainforest for centuries without destroying it.