The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal

Now this is a totally fascinating article from ENN. Apparently the ancient peoples of the Amazon region did some quite unexpected things, such as organizing urban centers in the rainforest without destroying it. Take a peek:

Friday, September 19, 2003
By Maggie Fox, Reuters


WASHINGTON — Brazil's northern Amazon region, once thought to have been pristine until modern development began encroaching, actually hosted sophisticated networks of towns and villages hundreds of years ago, researchers said Thursday.

Archeological evidence and satellite images show the area was densely settled long before Columbus and European settlers arrived, with towns featuring plazas, roads up to 150 feet wide, deep moats, and bridges, the researchers found.

The report, published in the journal Science, suggests a society that was advanced and complex and that found alternative ways to use the Amazon forest without destroying it.

Nineteen evenly spaced villages were linked by straight roads, and the cluster could have supported between 2,500 and 5,000 people, said the researchers, led by Michael Heckenberger of the University of Florida. The villages were all laid out in a similar manner, and the roads were mathematically parallel.
"This really blew us away," Heckenberger said in a telephone interview. "It's fantastic stuff."

Heckenberger, who worked with indigenous chiefs from the Upper Xingu region as well as a team at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, said the settlements dated to between 1200 A.D. and 1600 A.D.

"Every 3 km to 5 km (mile-and-a-half to two miles) there is another...(Read on in: "Pristine" Amazon hosted large cities, study finds