Screenshots from a 3D animation of the Cotoca Site. Source: H.Prumers/DAI.
Utilizing mapping technology, archaeologists were able to discover a lost city that’s been hidden under the Amazon for centuries.
Researchers believe the two sites called Cotoca and Landivar, measuring in at 147 and 315 ha, belong to the Casarabe culture which existed around 500 to 1400 AD. It was found using Lidar technology, which uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure variable distances to earth, says Ocean Service.
Placed on the bottom of a helicopter high above the site the technology was able to detail the structures of the Amazonian centre. A study published in Nature described the design.
“The civic-ceremonial architecture of these large settlement sites includes stepped platforms, on top of which lie U-shaped structures, rectangular platform mounds and conical pyramids (which are up to 22 m tall).
“The large settlement sites are surrounded by ranked concentric polygonal banks and represent central nodes that are connected to lower-ranked sites by straight, raised causeways that stretch over several kilometres.”
Scientists also said that water management systems like canals and reservoirs were found. Nothing like this has been discovered in the Amazon before said German Archaeological Institute representative Heiko Prumers.
“Nobody expected that kind of society in that region… pyramids 20 metres high.
“The whole region has been so densely habituated during the pre-Hispanic time, that’s incredible to believe. There is a new civilization, new culture, waiting for us to study them.”
It’s believed the Casarabe people lived in this high-density area of the Amazon until 1400 C.E and mostly likely left the area due to flooding. While it is not known when an expedition will be carried out to reach this lost city by foot, Prumers has noted that without the technology it could have taken up to 400 years to unearth the mysterious discovery.
“We need to be patient and wait for further excavations in those sites to be able to explain something of what we are seeing right now.
“For me, who has worked over these last 20, 25 years in that region, it’s sort of a dream coming true! To say at the end of my career that, yeah, we have a new culture. That’s nice, I admit that.”
