The large upper Amazon site in Bolivia was super cool!

Know of any others similar to this? I mean in caliber and general historic topic. Not necessarily Amazon basin but that reveal less known ‘facts’… not like ‘Black Athena’ though thanks :-D

Can charcoal save modern civilisation? I suspect so ;-)

It’s possible that he may have been misinterpreted or that he embellished his story but it’s highly unlikely a Spanish Gentlemen of that time would take the chance of having his reputation and honor ruined by telling a huge lie knowing that he’d be “found-out” during his lifetime.

Later expeditions reportedly found little civilization. Of course, they weren’t interested in history, they were looking for gold and they wanted to find it quickly. When you’re distracted by something like gold you’re unlikely to have your interest aroused by signs of recent civilization or even to take note of them.

The jungle and the vegetation that accompanies it grows very quickly if given the chance. Traces of civilization could be covered by a jungle blanket in a matter of 10 to 20 years.

It’s fact the earliest known, large civilizations were centered on large rivers throughout the globe, in Persia, China, India, Egypt–why not the largest river of them all?

The amazing Amazon River.

I think archaeologists have literally just scraped the surface of the history of Pre- or Non-historic man.

The Roman army had a peculiar practice. Upon the defeat or surrender of an enemy army they’d slay one out of ten afterwards according to standard Roman procedure-I’m not sure why, perhaps it was to really show ‘em who was boss. Of course, “decimate” is derived from Latin-the language the Romans used and it was the word they created to describe one aspect of their unusual treatment of the vanquished. (The treatment may have been unusually humane; other armies may have been slaughtering 100% of their prisoners)

Today and for some time now, the word decimate has been horribly abused. It can however, be used correctly with the application of a little creativity. For instance, my friend ‘tithes’ at his church which is to say, he offers his church exactly 10% his annual income. He could legitimately declare: ” I’ve adopted a practice that practically decimates my annual income for the benefit of my church”.

Please, starting today, lets agree to abandon the practice of decimating the English language with the wanton abuse and misapplication of words!!

Thank You.

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!

Think outside the box.