Archaeologists find vast network of Amazon villages laid out like the cosmos
Laser and satellite technology revealed more than 35 villages.
By Laura Geggel | Live Science Associate Editor

December 9, 2020 | Billions of lasers shot from a helicopter flying over the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest have detected a vast network of long-abandoned circular and rectangular-shaped villages dating from 1300 to 1700, a new study finds.

The round villages all had remarkably similar layouts, with elongated mounds circling a central plaza, like marks on a clock.

Lidar technology revealed long-abandoned villages that look like the rays of a sun.
(Image: © University of Exeter; Iriarte, J, et al. 2020; CC BY 4.0)

“These latter elongated mounds, when seen from above, look like the rays of the sun, which gives them the common name of ‘Sóis,’” the Portuguese word for “suns,” the researchers wrote in the study.

A view of the Amazon rainforest from the helicopter during the lidar survey. (Image credit: University of Exeter)

The discovery is part of a new archaeological focus on the pre-Columbian Amazon. Within the past 20 years, researchers have learned that the rainforest’s southern rim was home to a great diversity of soil-sculpting cultures that engineered the landscape before the Europeans arrived. Within the past decade, scientists have uncovered the remnants of so-called “mound villages,” which are shaped as circles or rectangles, and connected by road networks.