Two archaeologists from Missouri State University are back from the Amazonian jungle in Brazil where they were looking for evidence of ancient civilizations.
Daniel Pierce and Chris Bodine, with MSU’s Center for Archaeological Research, were hoping to find evidence of human soil interactions such as geoglyphs, mounds or similar features. Bodine had identified those features through the tree canopy using lidar — light detection and ranging — imagery. Those features had been found hundreds of miles away but had never been confirmed in those areas.
In December, they traveled to the central Amazon and the western corner by Bolivia and Peru hoping to confirm their existence in person. Bodine said they found what they were hoping to find.
"We did find geoglyphs. We found evidence of geoglyphs," he said. "We found some evidence, some other evidence of other manmade features that we can't exactly go into right now because we're going to publish this stuff in academic journals, and we have to go through the peer review process first. We found several other lines of evidence that are known from other parts of the Amazon, but they're not known together in this part of the Amazon."
The two believe this is a very significant finding. Pierce said up to now it was believed that no large-scale civilization had ever been in those locations "in part because the soils they think were too thin, the bedrock was too close to the surface, so you wouldn't be able to perform really that much agriculture. What we have, what we have found, gives evidence that that's not true, that there absolutely was a large-scale settlement there."
The journey there was grueling, they say, requiring a lot of flights and a boat trip up the Rio Negro river, camping on the banks overnight. But they had a knowledgeable guide, who turned out to be a fellow archaeologist, who helped them find their way.
They hope to return in August and until then will be writing up their findings and giving presentations, hoping to raise funds for more research in the future. They will be the keynote speakers at the Missouri Academy of Sciences conference this spring at MO State. And they plan to travel to other states and countries, including Germany and Italy.
They said one thing they were surprised about and didn't anticipate is the relationship they built with a local village, which is subsistence only and has some pretty significant needs. A bridge that local children walk across is dangerous and in need of repair, and there are other infrastructure needs as well.
"They've been so welcoming to us and so helpful, you know, they kind of took us in the village, and so we would like to be able to help them out as well," said Pierce.
He said they plan to raise money not only to do more research, but also to help the village.
They created an organization called Terra Incognita Research Institute that goes alongside their work at CAR. Pierce said they did that to aid in fundraising and to allow them to solicit private partnerships.
