The Secret of El Dorado
In 1542, the Spanish Conquistador, Francisco de Orellana ventured along the Rio Negro, one of the Amazon Basin’s great rivers. Hunting a hidden city of gold, his expedition found a network of farms, villages and even huge walled cities. At least that is what he told an eager audience on his return to Spain.
The prospect of gold drew others to explore the region, but none could find the people of whom the first Conquistadors had spoken. The missionaries who followed a century later reported finding just isolated tribes of hunter-gatherers. Orellana’s story seemed to be no more than a fanciful myth.
When scientists came to weigh up the credibility of Orellana’s words, they reached the same conclusion. As productive as the rainforest may appear, the soil it stands in is unsuited to farming. It is established belief that all early civilizations have agriculture at their hearts.
Watch the full documentary now
wow. I’m definitely gonna try using charcoal on my corn this year. :)
interesting .. think I’m going to give it a shot with charcoal for my little herb garden!
I love this site thank’s so much, I am learning much more than I ever learned at school.
Linda ;-*
check out at 10:44 when Dr. clarks erickson is standing on the boat, check out in the water just over from his hand. Its a USO it pops up from in the water it has a white circular light then dives back under. and if you look closely you can see it has a shadow in the water, maybe not USO but deffinitly wierd, i thought it was an aligator at first but, not.
@ Daniel I watched it to and I saw something weird thank’s for pointing this out Daniel.
Linda ;-*
“School” teaches us what they want us to learn about the way they want us to be and think…Like church…well here in the U.S. for sure…
Think outside the box.
It’s funny how the so called 3th world has been destroyed by the Europeans since the begin of times… also, it’s funny how the hypocrites from the so called 1st world are so worry about how they deal with their forests since we already destroyed ours long time ago and nobody ever said a word about it…
Ancient cultures cultivates life in harmony with nature and we cultivate technology destroying nature. I wonder… are we really that smart?
Thanks for finding and posting this I saw this a few years ago on one of the Discovery channels and I haven’t been able to see it again or find it online til now.
It makes sense that a large civilization would form cities near rivers. Unfortunately since the natives didn’t have any immunity to smallpox or influenza (the flu) or measles when the Europeans arrived it would decimate the locals. I could see the diseases taking millions down to virtually nothing in short order. Smallpox had a deathrate of about 1/3 (for the major form) and that’s for people who lived around it constantly. In a totally new population a deathrate of 50% or more wouldn’t be unheard of. Add in influenza and measles and the like and a population could be taken from millions to thousands in short order. Look at what the Black Death did to Europe during some of it’s outbreaks. It killed on average 30% of people although in some areas it may have killed 60%.
To anyone thinking about using charcoal in the gardens research “biochar”. Look at the pix here of what it can do for the poor soils of the Amazon.
http://www.biochar-international.org/biochar/soils
As they detail in the doc take the poor soils add biochar and there can be an 800% increase in crops. If there are miracles this surely has to be one!