How the “lost cities” of the Amazon were finally found
And why they were so hard to see
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The Amazon has always been one of the most mysterious places on earth.
When European colonizers arrived in the 16th century, they were captivated by rumors of a golden city, hidden somewhere in the rainforest. Their search for “El Dorado” lasted more than a century, but only resulted in disaster, death, and further conquest of the indigenous people there.
Experts thereafter looked at the Amazon and saw only a desolate jungle; too harsh for extensive agriculture and therefore sparsely populated. They believed that it had always been this way.
Until recently.
Beginning in the late 20th century, archaeologists began looking more closely at the forest floor. Working with the indigenous people who still remained there, they excavated long ditches and mounds. After mapping them, they could see that these were the markings of large settlements; walls, moats, plazas, and roads that connected even more settlements. And they were all over the Amazon.
Further reading:
The Lost City of Z, David Grann
Exploration Fawcett: Journey to the Lost City of Z, Percy Fawcett
The works of Michael Heckenberger; anthro.ufl.edu/2013/09/29/hec...
Lidar reveals pre-Hispanic low-density urbanism in the Bolivian Amazon www.nature.com/articles/s4158...
The geoglyph sites of Acre, Brazil: 10 000-year-old land-use practices and climate change in Amazonia www.cambridge.org/core/journa...
Predicting pre-Columbian anthropogenic soils in Amazonia royalsocietypublishing.org/do...
The Lore of Lost Cities - Imagining The Lost City Of Z www.forbes.com/sites/davidand...
Once Hidden by Forest, Carvings in Land Attest to Amazon’s Lost World
www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/wo...
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Thanks for watching. This video is part of our series, Atlas. Catch more episodes of Atlas at our playlist here: kzhead.info/channel/PLJ8cMiYb3G5e4MOmzf-piIWQb4INRW18g.html
I know Vox has other channels and commitments but please make more episodes of Atlas and at a faster rate. I love many of your series, especially borders, atlas and earworm. They just tickle my curiosity.
@@pavankumaryendru817 vox borders is cancelled
4:26 - That soil sure looks like it follows the the path of the river, which is the same burning method used up north.
Yay - There are people who think there was no outbreak of disease due to interacton.
Jesus loves you He died on the cross for our sins He's the only way to Heaven
I've read about that the Americas were once home to a third of the human population, prior to the discovery of columbus and that most of the people died before they could even make contact with the colonists themselves because the diseases traveled faster then the conquistadors. Thats why most the land was already empty when the settlers arrived. So mind blowing to learn about those lost settlements now
Columbus did not discover the Americas ... He was the last of the explorers to put foot on land. Decades if not centuries before him the Clovis people, Vikings and even Chinese entered what is now Canada or Latin America.
@@yomommastupid Columbus was more the first man on America for the Europeans at that time, and it became widespread since European culture affected modern America the most. But we all know(at least people who know bit history) that he is not the first man on the continent nor the first outside man to enter America.
A third is I think a verry high estimate. I'm not sure that's supported. Most recent estimates put it at more like 50 million, which with the population of the rest of the world at 418 million in 1500 would equate to about 10.3%. The issue with much higher populations is food. Populations in Europe and Asia at this time were getting very large due to large scale relatively intensive agriculture becoming a thing. It's possible for archaeologists to not find a city, but to not see more traces of that kind of landscape transformation casts doubt that populations could have been over 100 million.
@@yomommastupid the Chinese never entered America that one has been disproved as a myth countless times
How can a disease travel by itself?
As an archaeologist, it’s wonderful to see appropriate credit given to the Indigenous communities of the Amazon as well as archaeologists like Mike Heckenberger (a lovely person and excellent scientist). I’m glad you’ve included some of the key recent publications on findings of urbanism and complexity in the Amazon. One of my friends is currently doing research on large-scale tree domestication and management over the last several centuries in the region (Victor Lery Caetano Andrade, in case you want to read his papers) and there’s more and more research on improving our understanding. Very cool!
As a King, it's wonderful to see appropriate credit given to my equals
I'm currently reading 'The Dawn Of Everything' by Davids graebor and wengrow. I was wondering if you are familiar with this book / the authors work and what you think of it (interested to get an archaeologist's opinion)? It mentions the Amazonia city civilisations and stuff.
@@ruperthart5190 It is good but there are some shortcomings
May I remind you the hidden fact that indigenous Native American population in their motherland, the Continent of America before European Colonizers arrived was around 15 millions, while European population in their motherland, Continent of Europe was around 25 millions. Today, Native Americans population in their motherland is 15 million, while the European population, in the Continent of America + Europe, is a staggering 'TWO BILLIONS'!
@@supremelyeducated3273 My jaw dropped as I read indigenous Native American population in their motherland, the Continent of America before European Colonizers arrived was around 15 millions, while European population in their motherland, Continent of Europe was around 25 millions. Today, Native Americans population in their motherland is 15 million, while the European population, in the Continent of America + Europe, is a staggering 'TWO BILLIONS'! A sad truth. 🤔
It's still painful to watch, that every time I see a satellite map of Brazil, the Amazon forest shrinks a tiny bit more
When they zoomed into that indigenous park, the deforestation all around it made me wince. Huge shame what they’re doing to such an enormous asset.
Whats sad is that no one seem to preserve their own forest but want to tell brazil how to handle theirs. If everyone focused more locally the results world wide would be better.
@@notybussy6369 a lot of people don’t have the level of introspection needed to see this... everybody loves to say brazil should conserve its forests, and almost in the same breath wonders why it’s such a underdeveloped country... this is the answer: to develop you have to build farms and mines and cities, not build fences around a forest
@@thomaswilis4682 brazil could get MUCH richer and developed by researching the biodiversity of the Amazon and developing new science and products while preserving it than it ever will by deforestating everything to plant soybean and create cattle. Not to mention that the Amazon is being destroyed for cattle and mining but the meat doesn't feed the brazilian people, it gets exported while brazilians are falling into hunger once again, and the mining gets directly from the mine to the port to get manufactured somewhere else and then Brazil buys the final product again for double the price. a country doesnt get developed if its economy is based on commodities only and its people is starving.
@@SomeOne-yf3qq I don't cry. Never.
That's pretty amazing. Also shows how large civilizations can vanish quickly from disease and the earth swallows up what remained.
yeah, one of the unsettling things about history is over the decades we have found more and more civilizations that rose and fell, vanishing from the record. it is a useful cautionary tales since they believed they were advanced enough to be immune and eternal too.
lucky for us the next intelligent live that developes on this planet or visits this planet from outside after we are gone will still be able to see the shitloads of plastic we drowned the planet in ...
Someday it will probably happen to us to.
Aztecs were also sacrificing millions of people bc they thought it kept the Sun working. This was like 200 years after the cathedral of Notre dame was made for context lol
@@ralfliebau5706 But.... we have genderneutral toilets?
What really interests me is how sustainable these settlements and people were. They worked together with the Amazon to create some of the most fertile soil ever, their buildings avoided the destruction of of the rainforest and even made use of the rainforest in their cities. It’s truly a thing of wonder to be done all those years ago, whilst now we deplete and destroy nature whenever we construct anything.
@@justayoutuber1906 they most likely died out from the dessease spread by the colonizers. After all dessease spreads faster than people tought at the time. So by the time they started going on exebitions to find anything everything would have been already gone
@@Zoidthelizard that's been proven wrong time after time but I'm not surprised since education on indigenous people history is really bad. Many people who studied mesoamerican cities have a theory that in reality the people that lived in those cities just straight up abandoned them the reason why they abandoned them could range from climate changes or politics. But we really don't why they abandoned them, all we know that it is very common to see in the americas.
@@ed4528 It has definitely not been proven wrong. I don't know about specific cities in Central America, but here in South America it has been pretty much proven that most settlements were destroyed by diseases brought by Europeans. I studied archeology in University here in Brazil, so I know that for a fact.
@@NankitaBR what I was referring to was the famous book called "guns, germs and steel" which was proven wrong by other archeologists as well as other historians and the book also created an issue where people automatically jump on the bandwagon all American indigenous died to diseases which is not true obviously, also the cities I was talking about were the ones located in central America and there you can also find settlements that were abandon by its own people. Heck the many plain nations in United States are even theorized to be the descendants of the mound builders which are located by the Mississippi River. I know this since I'm actually a dog typing this on the computer (I can lie about who I am too 😉)
@@ed4528 No one of merit disagrees that waves of disease caused the majority of deaths in the Americas. Have you even read that book? But even still, that book is pop-sci pseudo intellectual hogwash and has been debunked and regarded as nothing to take seriously by many scholars in related fields. So much of that book is just straight wrong. Too many laypersons with no outside knowledge or studies of these time periods come away with the most outrageous takes on the Americas as a result of that garbage.
You failed to mention that “El Dorado” was eventually discovered, the zipa (leader) of the Muisca people in Colombia was ritualistically covered in gold dust, and then bathed in Lake Guatavita and offered treasures as sacrifice in a ceremony to honor their deity. Settlers later tried to drain the lake to retrieve the gold, which nearly ruined it. The Muisca are the origin of the myths of El Dorado (in Spanish, “el dorado” just means “the golden one”, so it can mean a person, a city, anything covered in gold).
ty
Yea and hilariously even after meeting the Muisca, they went: there must a bigger a city of gold thats actually called el darado and proceeded to yeet themselves into the amazon looking for a city they already found
The thing is that place isn't as elaborate as what people think El Dorado should be. Reality is oftentimes disappointing...
If it meant the city it would have been la dorada instead of el dorado
@@kapudanuderya It could still mean "The golden place" in spanish "El lugar Dorado" which would still make sense.
I love Vox because I never know what I’m going to learn about but I’m never disappointed. I didn’t even know the history of explorations in Amazon and now all of a sudden I have a better understanding lol. Great way to start my day 😊
This comment is on every Vox post
@@londonmoren9611 😂😂😂😂 haha
Mmmn
Or you're a very sophisticated bot or you just like giving Vox compliments.
I'm trying to get a better understanding of your moist jungle, if you know what I mean.
Just imagine how many cultures and traditions were lost because of smallpox.
It was not lost, the Spaniards mixed with the cultures that were there, the Mexicans, Peruvians, Colombians, etc. They would not be brown-skinned if it had been so.
They would be gone anyway, we can't go back in time and surely someone from Europe, Africa or Asia would eventually come into contact with south America
Sad to see those other two under your comment continue to sneer at the idea that there was anything at all of value in the peoples that were lost thanks to disease-and yes, they *were* lost, and anyone who even remotely believes that every single people group and culture survives to this day thanks to mestizaje is a tool, if not a grifter. Surely they wouldn't be the exact same, of course, but they'd exist in a way that they do not do now.
@@fernandoc5536 Cultures change over time.
imagine how many millions of europeans & asians also died from it before they developed resistance. Oh wait they never mention that
There is so much history of the Americas that have been lost overtime, hopefully we uncover more and get a more complete picture of the history of the pre-European Americas.
Yes Sir!
The sad news is that most of what is discovered today is because of deforestation of the Amazon
You're welcome to come to the amazin and dig around for clues.
It's a shame how most of them didn't develop a written language and how the people who could've tell us something about their history were basicaly wiped out.
@@theviniso Same is true in Europe, before the Roman empire no one wrote anything down so for example, the only thing we know about the Germanics is what the Romans wrote down (which were at war with them). A lot is lost, everywhere, we only know the last maybe...2000 years or so.
Most of the people uncontacted by modern society live in the Amazon. Given the sheer complexity of life in the Amazon rainforest, human habitation is even more fascinating.
"uncontacted" is a bit of a news hype. these people interact with eachother and the rural parts of "civilization" in their countries.
Surviving in the rainforest is much less ‘complex’ Than building oasis in the desert where there’s no water …. Is ‘complex. ‘
There are actually very few groups in the world that are totally uncontacted, and even those that haven't engaged with modern society are aware of it to some degree (North Sentinelese people are aware of outsiders, certainly enough to attack them and drive them off). The vast majority have had some contact with each other, and with non-Indigenous people. The frequency or degree of contact, or what it entails, might differ, but it's rare for there to be people who have no idea that people unlike them exist. There's plenty of people in remote areas living a traditional lifestyle, but they know about the modern world, often because it encroaches on their territories (e.g. Brazilian illegal loggers in the Amazon).
Practically every primitive tribe in the Amazon and Indo-Pacific have been contacted, although you are correct in so far as that they haven't been incorporated into modern society.
It's important to mention that terra prata & the Mesoamerican chinampas were a form of intensive agriculture that relied on careful soil management. intensive Amerindian agriculturalists basically "designed" the soil to be perfect for agriculture. For terra prata, the addition of limestones stabilized the pH, broken charcoal added carbon content & absorbed water, and broken clay pieces allowed the soil to hold on to nutrients better, preventing erosion, making these soils the most fertile agricultural land in the world at the time (better than the floodplains of Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Indus). These unique high-output & sustainable methods of agriculture developed in the Americas have sadly mostly been lost though there are some remnants left. These artifacts in the Amazon may allow us to reverse-engineer the process
We already know how to design soil mixtures. However the availability of cheap fertilizers makes it very difficult to finance any agricultural business that doesn’t rely on chemical fertilizers.
I highly, very highly doubt that those lands were the most fertile lands in the world. You realize just how many people lived along the Indus river alone even in ancient times, right?
@@ariyune7007 and in this video it said that millions of people could have lived there. So I would say the soil is very fertile
@@Username-le4eq I never said the soil was not fertile. I said that the original commenter was wrong for saying that it was the most fertile soil in the world. You can't just make up claims like that.
@@ariyune7007 I agree. The settlements were not as massive as equivalent settlements in the so called “old world”.
Wow i've never heard of these settlements before. It makes me wonder how those civilizations worked, managing to survive in the middle of the biggest rainforest ever and if they ever came in contact with each other or with other coastal civilizations.
the only reason there's an amazon forest is because of the millions of natives that died when the new world came into contact. over years the rainforest used the thousands of thousands of bodies for nutrients.
For more information on how the common narrative of human history is wrong, i highly recommend "The Dawn of Everything: A New History for Humanity" by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
if I recall correctly, they actually had pretty extensive trade routes. the famed 'el dorado' was actually rich in salt, not gold, because salt was a really valuable trade item that had to be moved all around the continent. the spanish just had trouble understanding there was something valuable besides gold.
They had roads to each other so they definitely interacted
There is an old Portuguese or Spanish Explorer whose name I forgot that was treated as a liar for decades when he returned from an expedition to South America and Brazil, he said there were tall buildings made of wood and several natives every few miles down the river he took in the middle of the Amazon. One theory is that he was right indeed based on more recent studies and findings, the thing was as he was sailing down the river and stoping to make contact, he was also bringing diseases to those natives. As he set sail back to Europe, disaster was done already. Several natives got sick and the Shaman if you may of each settlement probably travelled to nearby villages in order to help and ended up bringing it back to their own home. He was treated as a liar because other expeditions decades later could not see tall buildings or natives at the river banks as that old explorer did. In a matter of years, probably those buildings would be consumed by the forest, not to mention the natives.
This video really blew my mind, as a Colombian I thought that it was going to explain how the real "el dorado" was actually Lake Guatavita. But learning about those interconnected amazon cities was amazing, I have always wondered about the pre-Columbian history of the Americas since most of the history lessons I was taught were from the European point of view.
That's the thing about history. The "winners" write the books.
Norway and Sweden was conquered by the church in 12th century, yet we dont talk about it
@@felixliljegren That's because Norway and Sweden aren't brown (at least not yet)
As a Brazilian, it blows my mind to imagine that we once were home to a great uncharted and complex civilization. Thanks so much for educating me, Vox ;) Edit: it also blow my mind how Brazilian media has never shown this to us.
I think is because different from Asian or European people, this civilizations did not record any historical data to tell people in the future about it. Our Brazilian culture is relatively nayv about that fact that we need to create historical data to support the culture.
To say their empire of 1/3 of the human population was “Uncharted” Is colonialist.
@@PedroBrazz Asian and African civilizations are well documented. Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, Nile-Egypt and Chinese Han are most prominent civilzations has data
@@fastinradfordable Maybe, but I don't think so. Even indigenous groups didn't know its existence, let alone us. So, in that way, it's safe to say it's uncharted for everyone, colonialist or not.
Long live the internet. Its a lot easier for a small brazilian youtuber to show us this, than the big sensacionalist media. What sells more? No wonder why TV is dying.
The amount of culture and history that has been lost just keeps growing. I hope we are able to recover what has lost to time and human action
In Calçoene in the Brazilian state of Amapá there's a mysterious archeological site sometimes nicknamed "the Stonehenge of the Amazon" because it's believed to have been an astronomical observatory.
“He was here, deep in the Amazon forest” Proceeds to mark in the middle of Mato Grosso do Sul, which is at least 1,000 km away from the Amazon and in fact is another Brazilian biome, the Cerrado.
It's just so sad when people do that in otherwise well-made videos.
@@unladenswallow5693 the video was great and really informative, but it’s very annoying when someone makes a mistake about your country geography, especially because that’s a research the Vox Team could’ve done in 1 minute. I’m sorry, but that’s like saying the Grand Canyon is in Texas or Pyramids are in Palestine.
I'm not even Brazilian and I noticed that...
The pronunciation of Tenochtitlan also physically hurt me
could have been forest before being logged
That last sentence hits home. The indigenous communities of the Americas, alongside practically any native or indigenous community, live the most sustainably and in touch with the Earth. I saw a video of a Native-American man in the Southwest that grew his own garden in the desert with *no* water using an ancient method, and here, you can see how large-scale societies were possible just by giving back what you took from the forest and living in harmony. The desire to exploit and take whatever you can what was brought by the Europeans soiled the land and overtook these modest but golden values. It ended up only benefiting Europe, hence why they are so wealthy today, while most of their exploited colonies that are now countries live in poverty. I really hope that we see *much* more indigenous and native representation globally over the years. Another thing to note is that, if the Mayan civilizations were able to rise out of the dense jungles of Central America, there would've been little reason the sam wouldn't have been possible for the Amazon!
Yep, when I think of the native american Buffalo jump I think of living in harmony with nature
@@BallawdeQuincewold Ok dude
Yes! I too hope that people will hand more land and power back to indigenous people.
@Zaydan Naufal thats what 40 years of communism do to countries
@Zaydan Naufal have you ever been to eastern europe? And btw the balkans apart bulgaria are in southern europe
RIP Fawcett, died searching what he believed in, sticking true to his convictions until the end, I don't even have half the courage he has to treck long periods of time in the Amazon like he did.
🙏
He led his son and his son's friend to untimely deaths for nothing. After reading The Lost City of Z it becomes abundantly clear he never had any intentions of living a long life and he managed to lead those poor boys to their deaths in the process. Still an impressive man but hardly one to he deified.
@@andrewman69 I'm not deifying anyone.
Over the 🌎 had and have it.
I read Percy fawcett’s memoir. He believed the city of Z was built by white Greek pre columbian travelers, and thought they came from atlantis. Kind of a wacko. There’s also some stories that definitely aren’t true, like him saying he met a race of ape men.
They were looking for large stone cities...in a place where there simply isn't a lot of stone available...and in many cases, a century or so after what was to all intents and purposes their apocalypse due to disease and collapse. Instead of looking for what was actually there in abundance. Typical of the time and world view of the explorers of that period. It's a good thing that people kept looking and sat down and listened to the indigenous peoples in the region who had been trying to tell them at least some of the fragmentary history they still possessed, as well as many of the artifacts they had.
In fairness to them, it would have been very difficult to recognise these patterns without sattelite imagery, 3D scanners and other modern technology. Not impossible, but certainly very tricky, especially if you don't know what you're looking for.
They were clearly looking for a bunch of abandoned buildings and castles like Europe or India has.
Hindsight 20/20. We've only recently discovered these things, with technology available that these people couldn't even begin to imagine. We've had satellite images since the 1950's and it still took us this long to get it, let alone with the primitive technology at the time
spoken like someone who knows very little about the subject; you're just trying to say good things about marginalized people to feel morally superior
Love seeing high quality archaeology content from Vox, as an archaeology student from Vienna it really helps to bring a broader perspective on the topic!
I just picked up 1491 by Charles Mann (2nd ed. 2011) and it covers a lot of this (populations, landscapes, smallpox, terra preta) as well as fascinating narratives of how we got from the lost past to today! Highly recommended!
Have a read of this book: The Discovery of the Amazon: According to the Account of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal and Other Documents.
I love how these videos are always informative yet easily digestible! I usually have a short attention span so this is such a treat for me everytime I need something to watch while I'm eating or even simply resting.
There is an old Portuguese or Spanish Explorer whose name I forgot that was treated as a liar for decades when he returned from an expedition to South America and Brazil, he said there were tall buildings made of wood and several natives every few miles down the river he took in the middle of the Amazon. One theory is that he was right indeed based on more recent studies and findings, the thing was as he was sailing down the river and stoping to make contact, he was also bringing diseases to those natives. As he set sail back to Europe, disaster was done already. Several natives got sick and the Shaman if you may of each settlement probably travelled to nearby villages in order to help and ended up bringing it back to their own home. He was treated as a liar because other expeditions decades later could not see tall buildings or natives at the river banks as that old explorer did. In a matter of years, probably those buildings would have been consumed by the forest, not to mention the natives.
I wonder what would have been if the disease brought overseas had never wiped these people out. Would the explorers have blended their ideals with the strong and healthy locals instead of waging and winning a war on an already depleted community both in health and strength in numbers?
@@ebiebertson7970 You and me both dude
His last name was orellana I believe, although it might have been a different one
You might be mentioning abouy Francisco de Orellana.
@@ebiebertson7970tbh, if diseases didn’t wiped my poeple out, wars would still happened, and the population of native Americans will keep growing and growing, and growing, until is like 1 billion people or even more, also people would of been able too keep there cultures and traditions it would most likely resemble Africa or Asia, mesoamerica would have had massive cities, the Inca empire also, there cities would grow into mega empires, and there would def be a new architecture, in the Americas, Europeans would grow tired of the wars and they would just want too trade, the Americas would have been absolutely populated, by millions upon millions of Amerindians.
we need more videos like these, atlas series is one of the best
That's so fascinating. We honestly have so much to learn from these civilizations.
in what sense
@@abraxasee8946 sustainable living and farming which is important because of climate change
@@user-sb8ks1ij7b In that aspect i agree with you
@@abraxasee8946 their culture and history as well as how they thrived in harsh conditions
@@user-sb8ks1ij7bEvery other nation in the world has mastered that. They're not uniquely special lol.
We're so fortunate to be living in a time when these long-time mysteries can finally be solved with technologies like satellite images
I'd rather have some mysteries and not be so close to the end of times.
There are some new technologies that scan the land with drones and lasers and stuff, it gets some detailed pictures of the land "erasing the trees" using computers. It's really impressive, I've seen a video in English on youtube a while ago.
Yet we're far away from perfect. Titanic was only found in 1985 and we still have mysteries like MH370 to solve
This is so heartbreaking. If only the people of the lost cities had the knowledge to record their history and culture, we could have learned so much from them.
They did have writing, just their records were mostly destroyed by Europeans
@@mwrees how do you know?
@@mwrees yes it's so sad that the europeans did this.
what do you think we would learn from them? how they sacrificed their own children and danced to the sky b/c they thought it would bring rain during dry seasons?
@@jgg204 I mean Europeans thought that there was a man who walked on water and turned water into wine… still do
As an archaeologist I’m so happy to see no one in the comments has asked if the gold was found. This is actual science, brought in a well researched, well made video. Thanks a lot!
Well, was it though?
I too am curious
@Poolerboy 0077 Fawcett reached Z. He died there.
@@jaddyrose9318 But did someone else eventually find it?
They were too late
I’ve spent a lot of time researching this, can’t wait to watch
Each video, a masterclass of story telling and editing. Plus very interesting
I would argue that these cities are similar to Rhine River Valley Cities, stretching along the Amazon River as a highway that connect these cities, then the Diseases arrived, wiping the inhabitants of the cities like Black Death eradicated huge chunks of populations in Europe. Then survivors abandon their Urban lifestyle and move deep into the jungle and away from the River where the disease originated from, and they create urban legends and myths surrounding such catastrophic events that no more major civilization ever developed along the Amazon River. We know that cities get erased from the face of the earth pretty quickly. A lot of cities are buried under sedimentation, taken over by the nature and slowly crumbling and disappear, for example after the Hun and Mongol invasions, a lot of once major city reduced to small village or even completely abandoned, and the only clues left are written accounts on the city and how it got destroyed. The Amazonian civilization didn't leave any survived written accounts, and we dismiss the whole thing as a myth, but I believe there's a metropolis somewhere deep under the ground by the Amazon River.
The real miracle, is that the Europeans managed to rebound after the Black Death.
0:04 "deep in the amazon rainforest" The X is at least a few hundred miles from where the amazon forest even starts. Thats the brazilian midwest, where you find the "cerrado" biome, a kind of savanna. So, either the X is in the wrong place or the phrase was just for dramatic effect.
The Louvre and British Museum: **
this is gonna be my devious lick yet 😈
What things do they have from the Amazon because if so I want to see them
Where would those poor people there keep it then?
I always love these kinds of videos that you guys are making!!! it's just so good!
It saddens me that their were probably countless individuals each with their own story that are now lost to time
W video. Great content as always 👍
Recent LIDAR scans have shown huge cities a vast network of roads connecting all of them. It wasn't thousands but millions of people who inhabited these. The jungle just grew over everything hiding all traces.
That is amazing, great research doing this piece. Ty
“You need have no fear of any failure” Famous last words
I live for these Atlas videos, so good!
WOW! this is really incredible and it gets all exciting about the possibilities of adventure!!
Thank you for covering this, Vox team. What is happening *right now* to the Amazon and its inhabitants at the hands of colonisers is a tragedy all onto itself.
Uhh the people ruining the Amazon is the south american countries themselves. Nothing to do with colonisers . victim mentality.
I wonder if these discoveries could pave the way for sustainable protection of the rainforest while enriching the lives of those living around it, as it seems these were prospering communities which managed to live without damaging the rainforest significantly?
Obviously it's pretty well known but the book "The Lost City of Z" is an amazing page turner of a non fiction book
On this movie the rivers are very narrow. They are very large. French 💋s to you from Brazil.
Yes, a great description of a stunning life.
@@grahamyates2490 👍
👍
To anybody really interested in the history of Amazon civilization, I warmly recommend John Hemmings magnificient book 'Tree of Rivers'. There you will learn how insignificant Fawcett is to the whole story.
Didn’t mention any discoveries that have been done with Lidar??? That’s literally what’s gunna revolutionize the whole process
5:41
I keep feeling sad about how small the Amazon is getting
@@justayoutuber1906 He is my brother. But very rich. I am very poor.
Absolutely incredible
What a great clip. History mysteries are often pretty simple. We just have to look at them with a different vision.
That’s just so freaking amazing. I hope in time we can learn more about them!
“These lost cities shows how humans and the rainforest once coexisted a relationship were barely just beginning to understand” Wow.
The Amazon rainforest has a lot of hidden tails about it. While studying and researching about the Amazon rainforest, It becomes even more interesting and quite phenomenal to learn more stuff and stories about it. Especially with the city of Z this a rlly cool
Thank you for this video! I can't believe how many times I've heard many people saying that the indigenous people of the Americas had nothing and were still living in the stone age before the Europeans came. That's just simply untrue
Excellent little documentary, wish it were longer.
Technically, machu picchu was not discovered untill in early 20th century. 1911 to be exact. Who knows what else is out there.
Super interesting video! In relation to this topic, I strongly suggest the reading of the book "Conquest of America: The Question of the Other" by Tzvetan Todorov. It really opened my mind when I was in university, I totally changed my perspective about indigenous people, that was influenced by the superficial education I had in school.
Thanks for this vids❤
Just finished listening to the audiobook The Lost City of Z by David Grann, it was great to watch this video and actually see Percy Fawcett. Fascinating story and a tragic end to a culture. I highly recommend the book.
never been this early
Pog
Same
Fr
Same
Same
So sad to see all the immense deforestation literally all over the satellite imagery... Takes away from the amazing story
Thanks, this is needed to be seen.
Pre-European history in the Americas is so cool. I hope that in the future there will be more of an emphasis on it in school and that new discoveries will be covered on the news.
Just see😳 the amount of Amazon forest cut down in video , Vox should make a video about before & after cutting down of Amazon forest and what it is used for currently 🖖
This is not Amazon, is Cerrado is barelly next to the Brazilian capital, is a native Savannah of South America, is more next to Argentina or Bolívia, than to Amazon
Imagine a world where Aztecs, Incas, Mayans, and all the other indigenous peoples of the Central and South America somehow survived the colonization era
We are still here but a lot of us are mixed with a degree of Spanish ancestry too bc of the colonization (we are called mestizo but I don't really use the term bc the history behind it)
@@Quixina it's a bit more complicated than that-imo it's useful to consider the three groups that Canada identifies as Indigenous: First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. The Inuit people are pretty different from the rest and are much more recent arrivals to the Americas, even though they have been in Canada for thousands of years-the First Nations have been here upwards of 10 or even 20 thousand years-so the Inuit have comparatively not been here as long-and then there's the Métis, which is like Mestizo but French, Métis communities formed when French colonizers intermarried with Indigenous folks in Canada-since the same did not happen during English colonization, there is no analogous Mixed group in English America but there are some mixed groups in the US that predate US colonization, like the Louisiana Creoles and Nuevomexicanos of Louisiana and New Mexico respectively-basically what I'm trying to say is that my interpretation of the original comment was more like "imagine a world in which the organizational and economic structures of First Nations remained the dominant ones" as opposed to "imagine a world in which the First Nations themselves still exist" maybe im being too generous though lol
Imagine if they were immune to European diseases.
Spoilers (at least in Colombia) most of them were displaced and or exterminated by the government, for example near where I live there was a small settlement of "Yariguies" that survived until the 20th century but, oil was found in their territory. and Standard oil aka Exxon wanted to exploit it, so... You can imagine the rest.
@@Quixina oh yes i am aware thank you. What i meant was if their nation had survived into the modern world (without the influence of European powers and etc). It'd be so cool to see the Aztec civilization as a country today don't it? Also, we too use "meztiso" here in the Philippines though i wonder since it doesn't have the same negative connotation here. Hmmm
Man thats so frustrating. I wish we knew more I wish we could see these cities at their most prosperous but we never will. All thats left to wonder is wehere anf what else we missed.
This was fantastic!
Correction: the region described as 'south amazon' shown in the map is not even close to the Amazon rainforest. It is a whole other biome called Pantanal, a huge seasonal wetlant. It is surrounded by yet another huge biome called Cerrado.
Pantanal é mai pro MS e Paraguai, a parte mostrada, Mato Grosso, é Amazônia mesmo, inclusive o Xingu. O negócio é que a amazônia descia bem mais, até encontrar o pantanal justamente, mas o dematamento comeu boa parte desse "sul. Se você olhar no mapa hoje, Mato Grosso é quase todo cerrado, com uma mancha de amazônia que é a reserva do Xingu. O mesmo tá acontecendo em Rondônia.
@@ha22el5 Amém.
I read about this years ago in the book 1491 by Charles Mann. The video doesn't get into it (which is a sad dereliction imho) but the mounds were created intentionally by using clams and other mollusk shells native to the rivers to build a foundation that provided more aeration and drainage so crops could be more easily and consistently grown. We really have completely underestimated the complexity of pre-colonial life in the Americas.
Another great video 🙌👏
my old room mate Jorge Castro of Colombia does research about this and when he talked with me about it I couldn't fathom what had been lost and it took him explaining it to me several times for me to understand the scale of human settlement that existed before the spanish showed up
I didn't know the amazon rain forest had cities,espcially lost cities,I know there's a few tribes hidden in the amazon rain forest,but not cities,but the amazon rain forest is a great way to hide things though cause of the forest is so huge
The Amazon rainforest was a garden. The ancient groundskeeper died and the garden grew over the cities...thats why its hard to see it
For your sake I hope you do not believe this
Wow this was great. Thanks.
I suggest to anyone interested in the subject to look into the works of prof. Eduardo Góes Neves. He does an amazing archaelogical job in the Amazon. There's a few livestreams with him in english. Another amazing related subject is the Peabirú. Peabirú was the biggest of several indigenous roads, made by man and by the megafauna that once lived here. This roads crossed the whole continent, connecting various ethnic groups allowing them to trade food, material, techniques and culture. Peabirú probably connected the Atlantic to the Pacific, starting on a few places in the nowadays stated of Sao Paulo, Paraná and Santa Catarina and certanly reaching Cuzco. It was well documented by some explorers and the various accounts of "a big Empire up in the mountains of silver" were the reason Aleixo Garcia and Juan Diaz de Soliz went up the Rio da Prata(River of Silver).
verdade Vox, eu mesmo sou formado na universidade Federal de ratanabá a UFR
God, I love the sources being listed and linked in the video description.
That pfp fits this comment too well
Thank you Vox. Because of this, I became interested in the Lost City. Well, all of your documentary videos are very beautiful and captivating. But here in this Lost City, after watching it, I saw the next KZhead video recommendation from National Geographic and it's also about the Lost City of El Dorado, the City of Gold. And this video was just 4 months ago, and it's the latest update about the Lost City in the Amazon. When I watched it, I got even more excited because of the ancient cities they discovered, and with the help of their technology for scanning the entire valley, they discovered a new area where people may have lived. When they went there, it wasn't easy to reach because it's a dense forest and uphill, and very dangerous because there might be bandits and snakes. When they arrived, they confirmed that people indeed lived there because of the pottery shards and stone structures. They are just starting to discover these because they're sure that there are many more hidden cities inside the Amazon and it will surely take a long time(years!!!) to discover. Must try watching it too, it's truly amazing.
It's such a sad thought that a massive civilization would just disappear
truly so much of these peoples way of life must have been lost. I'm interested in how they maintained complex infrastructure in an environment many explorers found to be dangerous to travel. What techniques did they employ for survivavl?
Probably didn't have TikTok
given the fact that the decendents of those people are still around, still maintaining many of their ways although the effort of colonization is ongoing, the simplest answer should be: these people thrive as the forest. they are one kinship as we all are, though most of us have been long disconnected from our roots. the european "civilization" that came to conquer has been uprooted for the longest time, taken over by nonsense ideas of static space and abstractions. They were, and still are, unable to recognize the ways of the forest eairth, spreading deserts where they go. incredible to see how much they have already killed and wasted, from fertile crescents to the oldest growth. and still, not all is lost, some people regain their sense of wholeness, nomadness. someday, every city will have grown to be a food forest, home and habitat for all our kin, two-legged and all from feathered to rhizomatic, mycelial. healthy soils and healthy souls. the old ways have come to pass. the way of the spheres awaits.
Well, Brazilian here, and what you might want to look into are the current indigenous communities that live there, and other such communities that have made the Amazon their home outside of Brazilian state power. There are the Ribeirinhos, which roughly translates to people of the rivers margins, which are very mixed communities. There are the Quilombolas, which live in the ancient Quilombos, which were secret and isolated towns, more like fortresses really, where enslaved people fled to during colonial times, and later in the Brazilian empire days. Today they exist as these very traditional communities that incorporate indigenous and African techniques for survival. Kind of amazing really.
@@sabinasabino141 yes, thank you for bringing them up. there is much ongoing existence that the powers of "civilization" struggle to silence and erase. and as magnificent as the remains of "pre-colombian" cities in the amazon are, the fetish of the colonized mind for grandeur, treasure, power and status shines clearly through, even in these comments. people dreaming about the greatness of civilizations lost just as the same story keeps unfolding and the living people are being forced off their lands, off their ways, to get rid of them in order to exploit their "natural resources". Salve Amazonia, quema babylonia...
As an Indian our forefathers used to say if you want to find old or ancient cities first look for water resources like rivers, lakes, ponds. People need water more than food to run cities.
Great Content.. well research
Love Archaology like this and how it proves that it's a good thing our perception of the past is always changing
Very interesting video! It is believed that El Dorado came from the Spanish misinterpreting a native Colombian festival called "El Hombre Dorado" - where a man covered in gold would make sacrifices for gods in a lake.
Not sacrifices, but throw gold artefacts and esmeralds to the lake
It cannot be understated how incredible, beautiful, and advanced the cultures of the Americas are and were, and how tragic it is that so much of it has been lost to history thanks to the colonization of European settlers.
More incredible is how advanced the Europeans where. They where like 100years more advanced then the rest of the world. A race full of explores and scientist taking over the whole world just using theyr brains.
@@zeik04 I smell a racist
@@crazy_acid77 Yes you are the best example of the racist in 2022. Racism against white minoritys are the new norm these days.
@@crazy_acid77 Following the tried and true liberal agenda--when you don't like the facts, yell "racist".
@@zeik04 The Europeans were actually like 1000 years more advanced than the stone aged peoples they encountered in North America, and 500 years more advanced than the ones in South America.
Very cool to see the geoglyphs that we have here in my state Acre
Well researched👍
What's the song used at the end? It's so good!
: you can find it in the site of APM music under that name.
Maya, Aztec and Inca culture are very interesting. But what people tend to oversee are the Olmec. A group of indigenous people that is far older than these other groups. As it appears they all got their ideas and knowledge from this Olmec civilization.
nice video. these ancient peoples are amazing.
Such a cool concept
If you’re interested in explorers in the Amazon, read “River of Darkness” which is about Francisco Orellana, a Spanish explorer who traveled the whole length of the Amazon River. He recounted big cities throughout his expedition.
beautiful content but a reminder here to watch and protect amazon
This, absolutely this
Brasil should.
@@Bananaman-hk6qw Or Brazil?
Great I ordered them on Amazon should be arriving soon
Keep up the good work
It feels so good to be finally recognized. Our people have been living in secrecy for 100s of years and finally I feel like my mission is getting accomplished. Now I can finally go back knowing that I have helped uncover our identity a little bit. The elders will surely praise my work. I miss my home. I'm coming back Kuchata. Very soon.
If they want more attention maybe they shouldn't be hiding deep in the Amazon huh?
5:21 - "...the Amazon" (next to farmland). [Zooms out.] Behold the scale of devastation.
Could you guys please make more geopolitical videos?
Fascinating. Just fascinating.