So There Was A Highly Advanced Civilization In The Amazon After All

So Colonel Percy Fawcett has been vindicated. The British explorer, who David Grann wrote about in the wonderful book The Lost City of Z, was last seen in 1925, trudging off into the jungles of the Amazon basin, searching for evidence to support his belief that a vast civilization had once populated the area-the fabled city of gold, perhaps, El Dorado. In the years since, the prevailing opinion has been that he was following a pipe dream, that the harsh physical conditions of the basin have always precluded mass inhabitation. Now, as Grann reports today, at The New Yorker:

In cleared-away areas of the upper Amazon basin, researchers, using satellite imagery, have recently pinpointed a vast network of monumental earthworks, including geometrically aligned roads and structures, constructed by a hitherto unknown civilization. According to a new report published in the journal Antiquity, the archeologist Martii Pärssinen and other scientists have documented more than two hundred and ten geometric structures, some of which may date as far back as the third century A.D. They are spread out over an area that spans more than two hundred and fifty kilometers, reaching all the way from northern Bolivia to the state of Amazonia in Brazil.

The structures that have been discovered thus far represent only ten percent of the whole, according to the archeologists, who attribute the disappearance of the civilization to disease spread by the arrival of European conquistadors in 16th century.

"What is striking about the structures is that their monumentality and sophisticated design are best seen from an aerial view," says Grann, "where they look like an elaborate geometry equation diagrammed in the earth."

Or, you know, maybe they're just alien landing pads.