A total of 26 monuments have been studied in the region, about half of which were previously unknown to archaeologists. Once upon a time there lived a developed farming community.

What hides Bolivia’s forests?

Our results refute the argument that the western Amazon was sparsely populated in pre-Hispanic times and complement the existing evidence that the Kasarabese culture had a highly integrated, continuous and dense settlement system.
– Archaeologist Heiko Prumers of the German Archaeological Institute begins.

• Archaeologists have explored six regions of the Amazon using laser scanners mounted on helicopters.
• The ancient culture of Kasarabe existed here, between 500 and 1400 AD, in what is now northern Bolivia.
• A network of urban settlements with low population density has been discovered under the dense forest.
• These were the first cities in the tropical plains of South America to have many complex ceremonial structures, including oriented stepped platforms and U-shaped mounds around the world.
• Prior to this, archaeologists suggested that the poor tropical soils of the Llanos de Mojos plains in Bolivia could not support the existence of large human populations and complex urban civilizations.
• But the people of Kasarabe were skilled farmers, turning the seasonally flooded Amazonian savanna into rich farmland.
• Little is known about how the people of Kasarabe built their ceremonial buildings or organized their settlements. The archaeologists were assisted by LIDAR, a laser scanner that did what used to be years of hard fieldwork in a single flight.

Leader scan shows ceremonial buildings and radial dams of Kotoka / Prümers / Nature

in the study Describes two large settlements, Kotoka and LandivarThey were the center points of the regional network of 24 settlements, still connected by visible dams.

These two great settlements were already known, but their enormous size and architectural refinement were only revealed by survey.
– write scientists.

By their estimation, the Casarabe people required about 570,000 people to build Kotoka, ten times more than it would take to build Tiavanaco, another ancient city whose ruins are found near the east, 72 kilometers from La Paz, in western Bolivia. cubic meters of land. On the shore of Lake Titicaca. Ditches and fortifications were built to protect the central settlements, as well as large water control systems.

These data show a complex layout hierarchy.
Fisher says.

All this demonstrates the social complexity of this society and provides a level of social organization not yet associated with the early Amazon.

Scientists obtaining data from the air will now search for ancient artifacts in archaeological excavations. This can provide more information about the diets, lifestyles and cultural traditions of these farming societies.