Lost Cities of the Amazon the Amazon Tropical Forest Is Not As Wild As It Looks by Michael J
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ARCHAEOLOGY Lost Cities of the Amazon The Amazon tropical forest is not as wild as it looks By Michael J. Heckenberger hen Brazil established the Xingu Indigenous Park in 1961, the re- Wserve was far from modern civili- zation, nestled deep in the southern reaches of the vast Amazon forest. When I fi rst went to live KEY CONCEPTS with the Kuikuro, one of the reserve’s principal ■ To most people, the Amazon indigenous groups, in 1992, the park’s boundar- forest is the quintessential case ies were still largely hidden in thick forest, little of pure nature slowly being more than lines on a map. Today the park is sur- destroyed as humans intrude. rounded by a patchwork of farmland, its borders ■ In fact, what seems pristine has often marked by a wall of trees. For many out- itself been shaped by humans. siders, this towering green threshold is a portal, In some areas the forest is sec- like the massive gates of Jurassic Park, between ondary growth that took hold the present—the dynamic modern world of soy when native peoples were fi elds, irrigation systems and 18-wheelers—and wiped out by their encounters the past, a timeless world of primordial nature with Europeans. The author and society. and his colleagues have found Long before taking center stage in the world’s extensive pre-Columbian ruins. environmental crisis as the giant green jewel of Communities had a self-similar or fractal structure in which global ecology, the Amazon held a special place houses, settlements and clus- in the Western imagination. Mere mention of its ters of settlements were orga- name conjures images of dripping, vegetation- nized in similar ways. choked jungles; cryptic, colorful and often dan- gerous wildlife; endlessly convoluted river net- ■ Thus, the history of the Amazon is rather more interesting than works; and Stone Age tribes. To Westerners, usually thought. The environ- Amazonian peoples are quintessential simple so- mental challenge is not only to cieties, small groups that merely make do with later the Amazon still grips the popular imagi- preserve unspoiled wilderness what nature provides. They have complex nation as nature at its purest, home to native but also to recover the tech- knowledge about the natural world but lack the peoples who, in the words of Rolling Stone edi- niques of sustainable farming hallmarks of civilization: centralized govern- tor Sean Woods in October 2007, preserve “a and forestry that the ancestors ment, urban settlements and economic produc- way of life unchanged since the dawn of time.” of the region’s present inhabit- tion beyond subsistence. In 1690 John Locke fa- Looks can be deceiving. Hidden under the ants developed. mously proclaimed, “In the beginning all the forest canopy are the remnants of a complex pre- —The Editors World was America.” More than three centuries Columbian society. Working with the Kuikuro, LUIGI MARINI 64 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN October 2009 I have excavated a network of ancestral towns, past human intervention. By developing a mix of KUHIKUGU, known to archaeolo- villages and roads that once supported a popu- land uses, soil-enrichment techniques and long gists as site X11, is the largest lation perhaps 20 times its present size. Huge crop rotation cycles, the ancestors of the Kui- pre-Columbian town yet discov- swaths of forest have grown over the ancient set- kuro thrived in the Amazon despite its infertile ered in the Xingu region of the tlements, gardens, fi elds and orchards, which fell natural soils. Their accomplishments could in- Amazon. It housed 1,000 or more people and served as the into disuse when epidemics brought by Europe- form efforts to reconcile the environmental and hub of a network of smaller an explorers and colonists decimated the native development goals of this region and other parts towns. For a key to this artist’s peoples. The region’s rich biodiversity refl ects of the Amazon. conception, see page 68. www.ScientificAmerican.com SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 65 “Nature Folk” scribed the earliest expeditions, became an in- The most famous person to go looking for lost stant classic in the fl edgling discipline of anthro- civilizations in the southern Amazon was Percy pology. The book set the tone for 20th-century Harrison Fawcett. The British adventurer studies of Amazonian peoples as small, isolated scoured what he called the “uncharted jungles” groups living in a delicate balance with the trop- for an ancient city, Atlantis in the Amazon, ical forest: “nature folk.” Later anthropologists replete with stone pyramids, cobbled streets and often viewed the forest environment as uni- alphabetic writing. His tales inspired Conan formly inimical to agriculture; the soil’s poor Doyle’s The Lost World and perhaps the Indi- fertility seemed to preclude large settlements or ana Jones movies. David Grann’s gripping recent dense regional populations. By this reasoning, book, The Lost City of Z , retraced Fawcett’s path the Amazon of the past must have looked much before his disappearance in the Xingu in 1925. like the Amazon in recent times. Actually, fi ve German expeditions had al- But this view began to erode in the 1970s as ready visited the Xinguano people and lands. In scholars revisited early European accounts of the 1894 Karl von den Steinen’s book Unter den region, which talked not of small tribes but of Naturvölkern Zentral Brasiliens, which de- dense populations. As Charles Mann’s best-sell- RETSECK GEORGE [THE REGION] X17 Lake Tafununo X6 Land of Legend Archaeological surveys and excavations have revealed that X18 parts of the Amazon were densely populated on the eve of European exploration and colonization. The author’s team X22 focuses on the area inhabited by the Kuikuro people, located in the headwaters of the Xingu River in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. It was here that the famous British explorer Percy X11 Harrison Fawcett disappeared more than eight decades ago X35/36 X38 when looking for lost cities. 10 Kilometers Kuikuro study area Boundary of Amazon Basin Areas of complex societies Xingu Indigenous Park Pre-Columbian towns Caracas Paramaribo Cayenne Marajó Island Belém Bogotá Santarém Manaus Quito BRAZIL Xingu River Salvador Acre Upper Tapajós Llanos Mato de Moxos Grosso Brasília Lima BOLIVIA La Paz 66 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN October 2009 [WHAT THE REGION IS LIKE TODAY] WA Kuikuro woman fi shes with a basket in a pond adjacent to the The Kuikuro archaeological site X13 (Heulugihïtï). The Kuikuro people were active participants in the TFlutists and dancers commemorate the late Brazilian anthropologist Apoena author’s fi eldwork and co-authors on the resulting Meirelles during the Kuarup funerary journal articles. Theirs is one of the few Amazonian festival in August 2005. societies to maintain the full breadth of its culture— language, rituals, art—despite centuries of depopu- lation, and they continue to practice intensive agri- culture (mostly of manioc), fi sh farming, orchard production and forest management. SThe Kuikuro preserve a way of life that predates 1492. The archaeological record SA Xinguano village, with a population of a couple of hundred people, shows that they organize their economy and settlements as their ancestors did. consists of large thatch houses around a central plaza. ing book 1491 has eloquently described, the Archaeological research in several areas Americas were heavily populated on the eve of along the Amazon River, such as Marajó Island [THE AUTHOR] the European landings, and the Amazon was no at the mouth of the river and sites near the mod- exception. Gaspar de Carvajal, the missionary ern cities of Santarém and Manaus, has con- who chronicled the first Spanish expedition fi rmed these accounts. These societies interacted down the river, noted fortifi ed towns, broad, in far-flung systems of trade. Less is known ); ); well-kept roads and large numbers of people. about the southern peripheries of the Amazon, Carvajal wrote on June 25, 1542: but recent work in Llanos de Mojos in lowland dancing ( Bolivia and in the Brazilian state of Acre sug- We went among some islands which gests that they, too, supported complex societies. AP Photo AP we thought uninhabited, but after we got In 1720 Brazilian frontiersman António Pires de to be in among them, so numerous were Campos described a densely settled landscape in Michael J. Heckenberger has ) the settlements which came into sight … the headwaters of the Tapajós River, just west of done archaeology in the Xingu ); ERALDO); PERES region and elsewhere in the that we grieved . and, when they saw us, the Xingu: aerial view aerial Brazilian Amazon since 1992, ( author there came out to meet us on the river most recently as a professor and over two hundred pirogues [canoes], that These people exist in such vast quan- at the University of Florida. shing fi each one carries twenty or thirty Indians tity, that it is not possible to count their His work focuses on the social Reuters/Corbis and political organization woman woman and some forty ... they were colorfully settlements or villages, [and] many times and historical ecology of late decorated with various emblems, and in one day’s march one passes ten or prehistoric complex societies in they had with them many trumpets and twelve villages, and in each one of them the region, as well as changes ); RICKEY); ROGERS drums ... and on land a marvelous thing there are ten to thirty houses, and in these in indigenous societies follow- child ( to see were the squadron formations that houses there are some that are thirty to ing European colonization not just in Brazil but also in north- Corbis were in the villages, all playing instru- forty paces across ..