alt Hacker News> It can simultaneously be true that the populated areas of the Amazon where deliberately and carefully managed by the population and that the Amazon was largely untouched for any other reason.
Certainly, though nothing about the quoted fact that 97% of forest was uninhabited should lead us to make statements like "the pristine untouched Amazon idea is a European myth", nor does it give any information to go off of regarding their possible knowledge of environmental engineering.
Perhaps they weren't basing their statement on the "quoted fact" which was later posted in response to their statement (which FWIW isn't factual; as someone else points out this was not the only Amazonian civilization).