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Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

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Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#41

Post by pwillia7 »

whatwhaaaaat wrote: post #37
vdupras wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm hesitant about this. One the one hand, experts pile up pretty hard on this series and on M. Hancock. Maybe deservedly, I don't know. But I'm still sour about COVID where experts piled up pretty hard on the lab leak theory. When early on, experts were telling us that science said that masks were ineffective. They were adamant. Here, the very insistence of those experts, the aggressive tone of the wikipedia p…

The reality of the modern world cannot be explained by the history we are told.

The slow movingness of Science with its method and peer reviewing definitely fights against new ideas becoming accepted overnight, but we do get there, and glomming onto personalities with unaccepted ideas will hurt your 'correctness' more than help it.

I watched some of the first season and was actually already open to all the alt archaeology stuff with the precision arguments people make, but the more I looked the more clear it was just BS.

I think the biggest thing about the old world people miss (and thus makes alt archeology so attractive) is the mass use of slaves and general lack of caring about human suffering.

I couldn't believe Red Fort was built in 9 years in 1640, until I had that epiphany, for instance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Fort

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#42

Post by morkalork »

hosh wrote: post #36
holmesworcester wrote: post #21

My favorite discovery about Amazon civilization is that the incidence of human-edible fruit trees is much higher in any area near navigable water. They were modifying the forest to be more supportive of humans.

That didn’t just happen in the Amazon. The Pacific Northwest had something like that. My understanding is that the Eastern American forests were curated like that too, before it was cut down. I have heard of an oasis in North Africa that was curated this way, and it still survived despite being abandoned by humans. The modern version of this is called a perennial food forest.

It happens unintentionally too, if you've ever been to a state park in North America and seen an apple tree off of a trail, it's because someone once threw away an apple core.

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#44

Post by thinkyfish »

nico wrote: post #24

Just finished watching "Ancient Apocalypse" on Netflix. They go over this kind of discovery It's quite speculative, but also really fascinating. Even if what they claim is not completely right, it definitely shows how the current accepted understanding of the history of the Americas needs an overhaul and a lot more research PS: if you like this stuff, also check out the movie "The Lost City of Z"

You should check out the Miniminuteman series on ancient apocalypse, its pretty interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iCIZQX9i1A

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#45

Post by coffeecantcode »

coffeecantcode wrote: post #16
gonzo41 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time i see these I think about Spanish explorers who brought small pox over and caused these cities to collapse, only to return to Spain telling stories of jungle cities. Only to have the fleets turn up to dense jungle years later and fine nothing. But yeah, I also think about lost treasure and Indian Jones a lot with these stories.

There’s proven to be massive amounts of rare earth metals used by the indigenous populations in that area at that time, so it’s only natural to imagine that finding “lost” or abandoned cities from around that time has the potential to uncover large amounts of rare metals as well, potentially even cities that explain the stories told of cities filled with gold. The original comment didn’t need a history lesson on the…

I woke up cranky

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#46

Post by PittleyDunkin »

morkalork wrote: post #42
hosh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That didn’t just happen in the Amazon. The Pacific Northwest had something like that. My understanding is that the Eastern American forests were curated like that too, before it was cut down. I have heard of an oasis in North Africa that was curated this way, and it still survived despite being abandoned by humans. The modern version of this is called a perennial food forest.

It happens unintentionally too, if you've ever been to a state park in North America and seen an apple tree off of a trail, it's because someone once threw away an apple core.

Yes, much of early cultivation is theorized to have looked like this, particularly before sedentary agriculture. If you have a fairly stable seasonal migration pattern plants you eat or use will naturally "follow" you around and will tend towards forms that make them more attractive to human attention.

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#47

Post by hosh »

morkalork wrote: post #42
hosh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That didn’t just happen in the Amazon. The Pacific Northwest had something like that. My understanding is that the Eastern American forests were curated like that too, before it was cut down. I have heard of an oasis in North Africa that was curated this way, and it still survived despite being abandoned by humans. The modern version of this is called a perennial food forest.

It happens unintentionally too, if you've ever been to a state park in North America and seen an apple tree off of a trail, it's because someone once threw away an apple core.

It can and humans (like birds) do disperse genetic material. However we are talking about deliberately curated food forests.

The European forests, in contrast were not like that. I remember reading about accounts from settlers in North America noting the park like quality of some of the forests.

As another example, here where I live in the Sonoran (Phoenix), there are a lot of chollas. Those have nasty barbed thorns, but they also produce fruits. There is another native plant that has sticky leaves and can be used to brush off the thorns so that the fruits can be harvested. I learned this from one of Brad Landcaster’s videos on this; Landcaster said he learned it from one of the native elders. They would deliberately plant the plant with sticky leaves near chollas.

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#48

Post by hosh »

PittleyDunkin wrote: post #46
morkalork wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happens unintentionally too, if you've ever been to a state park in North America and seen an apple tree off of a trail, it's because someone once threw away an apple core.

Yes, much of early cultivation is theorized to have looked like this, particularly before sedentary agriculture. If you have a fairly stable seasonal migration pattern plants you eat or use will naturally "follow" you around and will tend towards forms that make them more attractive to human attention.

I think that minimizes the fact that people were deliberately curating and designing perennial food forests, historically and contemporarily. Our ancestors may not have the scientific knowledge we have now, but they were just as smart as we are.

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#49

Post by PittleyDunkin »

hosh wrote: post #48
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, much of early cultivation is theorized to have looked like this, particularly before sedentary agriculture. If you have a fairly stable seasonal migration pattern plants you eat or use will naturally "follow" you around and will tend towards forms that make them more attractive to human attention.

I think that minimizes the fact that people were deliberately curating and designing perennial food forests, historically and contemporarily. Our ancestors may not have the scientific knowledge we have now, but they were just as smart as we are.

> I think that minimizes the fact that people were deliberately curating and designing perennial food forests, historically and contemporarily.

I don't see this minimization (after all, we currently do this unintentionally today and nobody sees this as lack of intelligence and I certainly hope I never implied that people in the past were in any way less capable than ourselves) but I do affirm that people were just as capable of understanding the causes and effects of plant reproduction as they are today.

I'm just freely speculating on how to find the most minimal path to explanation and it's easier to explain the differences in the rise of civilization in the middle east vs the new world with other factors rather than something cultural or genetic or otherwise abstractly geographically-bound factors. And besides, I like the idea that people in the past wouldn't have just sat around ruminating how to maximize crop yields but had more fruitful activities to attend to. I don't celebrate the egyptian engineer who figured out how to haul a multi-ton brick up a high slope, I mourn for him (or her)!

EDIT: softened wording a bit

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#50

Post by physicles »

nico wrote: post #27
ricardobeat wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous common-sense belief was that the Amazon was never densely populated and had always been exactly like it is today, a dense forest with primitive tribes scattered hundreds of km apart. Twenty years ago, brazilian researchers who would mention this theory were considered a bit lunatic, at the “elvis isn’t dead” or “the US reads all the world’s email” level of conspiracy theories. So playing down these disco…

> Twenty years ago, brazilian researchers who would mention this theory were considered a bit lunatic You are right. However, not only Brazilian researchers, an not just 20 years ago Check out the movie "The Lost City of Z" or the story of Percy Fawcett

Also, the amazing story of Helena Valero, kidnapped by an Amazon tribe, survived just on her wits, and escaped years later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41758857
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