Lost Tribes Used Clever Tricks to Turn Amazon Wasteland to Farms

A vast series of earth mounds on the eastern coast of South America may be living landscape fossils of a forgotten civilization’s agriculture.

People raised the mounds between 1,000 and 700 years ago in order to create cropland in terrain that is flooded for half the year, and parched for the other half. New insect ecosystems formed on the mounds, further enriching the soils and keeping them fertile for centuries, long after their human stewards had vanished. This lost agricultural system could be a model for modern farmers, according to a new study. Read the rest of this entry »

Ancient Amazon civilisation laid bare by felled forest

Signs of what could be a previously unknown ancient civilisation are emerging from beneath the felled trees of the Amazon. Some 260 giant avenues, ditches and enclosures have been spotted from the air in a region straddling Brazil’s border with Bolivia.

The traditional view is that before the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese in the 15th century there were no complex societies in the Amazon basin – in contrast to the Andes further west where the Incas built their cities. Now deforestation, increased air travel and satellite imagery are telling a different story. Read the rest of this entry »

Drowned cities: Myths and secrets of the deep

Deep Secrets

The idea that great cities, rich in forgotten knowledge and treasure, lie hidden beneath the sea holds immense appeal. Scarcely a year goes by without someone claiming to have found Atlantis. But what’s really out there under the waves?

Jo Marchant looks at some of the sunken towns and cities discovered worldwide, and separates the facts from the myths. Read the rest of this entry »

The Diamond Sutra: First printed on 11 May, 868 A.D

868: The Diamond Sutra Discoveries a 16-foot scroll containing one of the most cherished Buddhist texts, is printed. A dated colophon is included, making it the first known printed text to carry an explicit date.

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Artificial Intelligence Cracks the Indus Valley Script

Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery

An ancient script that’s defied generations of archaeologists has yielded some of its secrets to artificially intelligent computers.
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