Amazonian civilization had estimated 3M people in 3% of forest area

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.

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.

Amazonian civilization now has an estimated 1M people in 0.3% of warehouse area.

> In the past 40 years, Amazônia has lost more than 13% of its vegetation cover.

This is loss of original forest cover, replaced by non-native vegetation: pasture, agriculture & tree plantations. 13% is about the amount of vegetation coverage domesticated in Amazonia over 40 years. It has been converted from wilderness into a renewable, denser source of ingredients for food, clothing and shelter.

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.

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

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