Many explorers entered this region in the past, but never returned
November is Native American Heritage Month. A Tuscarora student at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY wrote in an interesting question on the OldHouseQuestion@aol.com “hotline!” He asked, “What caused the sudden abandonment of the “Lost Civilization” in the Amazon Basin prior to the Spanish having an opportunity to annihilate them? The reader was referring to a previously unknown culture that has been discovered in the past decade in the far western basin of the Amazon River Basin in Brazil, Bolivia and Peru. Admittedly, the words, “Lost Civilizations” sound like the title of a 1930s era Hollywood movie. However, they are a fairly accurate description of the exciting discoveries being made in archaeology today.
Actually, several previously unknown cultures have been discovered in that region since the 1980s. Some of these societies ended in the 1200s, while others disappeared in the late 1500s. There were also many advanced cultures in the United States that collapsed in one or the other time periods. The current Native occupants of the Amazon Basin do not seem to be descended from those who built the ancient architecture. However, this assessment is not known for certain.
Spanish archives do not mention any contact with these people, but do mention several expeditions that went east of the Andes looking for gold and never returned. There was a persistent rumor of a great civilization in the Amazon jungle. However, after several expeditions did not return back to Lima, the Spanish decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
There are at least two excellent books out, written by gentlemen far more knowledgeable on the subject of the Amazon Basin cultures than this examiner. They are written in a style that is easily understood by educated laymen. The books are, “America 1491” by Charles Mann and “The Lost Civilization of Z” by David Grann. In 1925 British explorer, Colonel Percy Faucett, hiked out into the Amazon jungle to document the “Lost City of Z.” He was never seen again. The same thing happened to Norwegian archaeologist, Lars Hafskjold in 1997. The story of Faucett's life is being made into a movie, starring Brad Pitt. The ruins of “Z” were rediscovered by a Finnish archaeologist using “Google Earth” on his computer. International teams are working in the region, thoroughly studying the ruins.
The Amazonian Civilizations
The “Lost City of Z” was actually just one town in advanced civilization that lasted from around 200 AD to 1283 AD. As yet, archaeologists have been unable to explain the sudden cessation of construction and human occupation. The more common name for this culture is the Paititi. These people occupied a region about 155 miles in diameter in Brazil and Bolivia. Estimates for the population of this province vary between 50,000 and 600,000 persons. The occupants constructed earthen platforms to raise town occupation levels above seasonal floods, plus roads, causeways, canals and large plazas. They practiced a form of intense agriculture that was adapted to the unique climatic and geological conditions in the Amazonian tropics. The natural top soil of the Amazon is very thin, so the occupants created an artificial “potting soil” composed of charcoal, crushed animal bones, feces, decayed leafs and garbage.
During the rainy season the region flooded. Humans were confined to natural or manmade islands unless they traveled by canoe or over manmade causeways to other islands. However, this was a time when the waters were teaming with fish, frogs, snakes and waterfowl. Although their communities would have been somewhat waterlogged, their diets would have been rich in animal protein.
During the dry season, local protein sources would have been more scarce, but their diets would have been supplemented by crops grown in their gardens and large mammals that grazed on the nearby grasslands.
The geometric earthworks being discovered in eastern Bolivia and western Brazil look remarkably similar to those of the Hopewell Culture in southeastern Ohio and the large town of Ortona near Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida. Virtually the same forms can be seen in all three regions. The Hopewell Culture lasted from about 200 BC to 500 AD. The Lake Okeechobee Culture lasted from about 300 BC to 1150 AD. It was roughly concurrent with the Paititi in Bolivia.
On the far western edge of the Amazon Basin in Peru another civilization has been under study by British archaeologists since the 1990s. This civilization thrived on the drier land of the Andean foothills and Amazon Piedmont. The people did not have to build artificial islands or canals to survive, but did build large towns with mounds, plazas, streets and defensive moats. The region seems to have been occupied by advanced cultures from at least 600 BC till the late 1500s.
What is especially interesting to those who study North American civilizations is the similarities to the ruins in eastern Peru and the Brazilian uplands to Olmec sites in Mexico and many Native American towns in the Southeastern United States. These peoples did not utilize much stone in their architecture, even though, like in the United States, plenty of field stones were available. If the ruins of their towns were placed on the landscape of the Mississippi Basin or Southeastern United States, they would be assumed to have been built by the ancestors of peoples indigenous to North America.
Possible causes of the abandoned civilizations in Amazonia
The abandonment of the Amazonian communities has yet to be explained by anthropologists. The understanding of these formally unknown civilizations is still in its infancy. However, the timing of the late 1200s and then again, the late 1500s, does correlate with known and suspected events in North America that may have also occurred in South America
In North America, there were some severe droughts in both the Southwest and Southeast during the late 1200s and again, in the late 1500s and early 1600s. Droughts definitely had a major role in the collapse of the Anasazi in the late 1200s. Droughts in the Chesapeake Bay region are thought by anthropologists to have contributed to the abandonment of the Roanoke Colony and the near-collapse of the Jamestown Colony.
Not only was the weather unusually dry in North America during the late 1200s, but it was also a period of cold weather known as the Little Ice Age. Massive volcanic eruptions blocked out the sun’s light in many regions, causing short growing seasons and long, cold winters. The combination of drought and cold weather may have totally upset the agriculture of both North American and South American farmers. Certainly inadequate rainfall and relatively cool weather would have reduced the availability of food in the Amazon Basin.
Disease is another possible causative factor that must be considered. The bubonic plague was raging through Europe during the 1200s. The combination of the Little Ice Age and bubonic plague caused the Scandinavian communities on Greenland to be abandoned. There is evidence that some survivors might have gone to the Hudson Bay area of Canada. There is no doubt that Greenland Inuit traveled back and forth from Greenland to Canada. Either of these ethnic groups could have carried the bubonic plague into North America. The plague would have been most devastating in densely populated provinces, such as those around Cahokia, IL. Forensic anthropologists have already determined that the commoners in this region were nutritionally distress due to lack of protein and iron in their diets. The plague could have continued to travel southward into the Amazon Basin via the Caribbean Sea trade routes.
Epidemics are an even more likely candidate for the abandonment of Amazonia in the late 1500s. In his book, Charles Mann points out that a smallpox epidemic devastated the Inca Empire in the weeks just before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors under Pizarro. The Inca Empire was interlaced with roads which allowed goods to travel freely from the coast to the mountains to the rain forest. In a matter of a few more weeks after the Incas were conquered, smallpox could have traveled into Amazonia and wiped out much of the population.
Yes, the truth is out there, somewhere!
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