ACRE, BRAZIL — Before the Europeans turned up in South America, the assumption was that the Amazon was mostly uninhabited. Well, we were wrong.<br /><br />According to a new study published in Nature Communications, deforestation in the Amazon has uncovered at least 81 geoglyphs- trenches carved into the ground that were spotted on satellite images of Brazil's Upper Tapajos Basin.<br /><br />The geoglyphs come in a range of different shapes and sizes, and are believed to date back centuries, from the years 1250 to 1500.<br /><br />Archaeologists examined several locations and found fragments of pottery, stone axes, and fertile dark earth indicative of a long-term human settlement.<br /><br />Researchers used models to estimate that between 1,000 to 1,500 wooden settlements were built in the southern rim of the Amazon alone, housing 500,000 to a million people.<br /><br />This indigenous population was likely wiped out by the outbreak of diseases, and would have been worsened by the arrival of the Europeans.
