America Before

by Graham Hancock

  23. Heaton, The Discovery of the Amazon According to the Account of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal and Other Documents, 217.

  24. See, for example, A. C. Roosevelt et al., “Paleoindian Cave Dwellers in the Amazon: The Peopling of the Americas,” Science 272, no. 5260 (1996), 373–384, esp. 373: “The tropical rainforest was thought to have been an ecological barrier to Paleoindians because it provided only scarce resources for human subsistence, and anthropologists have theorised that people could not survive there before the development of slash and burn cultivation.”

  25. M. W. Palace et al., “Ancient Amazonian Populations Left Lasting Impacts on Forest Structure,” Ecosphere 8, no. 12 (December 2017), 2.

  26. Heaton, The Discovery of the Amazon According to the Account of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal and Other Documents, 235.

  27. Wilkinson, “Amazonian Civilization?” 81.

  28. Ibid., 81–82.

  29. Heaton, The Discovery of the Amazon According to the Account of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal and Other Documents, 198.

  30. Ibid., 202.

  31. See Wilkinson, “Amazonian Civilization?” 96.

  32. Thomas P. Myers et al., “Historical Perspectives on Amazonian Dark Earths,” in Johannes Lehmann et al. (eds.), Amazonian Dark Earths (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2010), 15.

  33. Wilkinson, “Amazonian Civilization?” 83.

  34. See for example the population estimates of Jan De Vries in European Urbanisation, 1500–1800 (Methuen, 1984), 28: “Of the perhaps 3000–4000 settlements in Europe that were vested with city rights of one form or another, or were otherwise acknowledged to be urban places around 1500, only 154 were inhabited by 10,000 or more people, and only 4 contained as many as 100,000. …” Also of note is that the whole of Scandinavia is estimated as having had a total urban population of 13,000 in 1500, which is just over half the size of Wilkinson’s largest estimated Amazonian settlement (30).

  35. Admittedly, the population of London is estimated as having fallen by a third following the bubonic plague. Even so, its estimated population of 60,000 in 1500 is revealing in the context of contemporaneous Amazonian urbanity. Figure taken from Bruce Robinson, “London: Brighter Lights, Bigger City” (BBC, 02/07/2011), http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/civil_war_revolution/brighter_lights_01.shtml.

  36. Figure taken from Tim Lambert, “A Short History of York, Yorkshire, England,” http://www.localhistories.org/york.html.

  37. Figure taken from “Alterations to the Municipalities in the Population Censuses since 1842: Toledo,” Instituto Nacional de Estadística (Spain), http://www.ine.es/intercensal/.

  38. Figures taken from aggregate sources on Wikipiedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Revolution.

  39. Wilkinson, “Amazonian Civilization?” 83–84.

  40. Ibid., 83.

  41. Ibid., 85.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Samuel Fritz and George Edmundson, Journal of the Travels and Labours of Father Samuel Fritz in the River of the Amazons between 1686 and 1723 (printed for the Hakluyt Society, London, 1922).

  44. See the discussion in Heaton, The Discovery of the Amazon According to the Account of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal and Other Documents, 62–63.

  45. Wilkinson, “Amazonian Civilization?” 85.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Ibid.

  48. In conversation with Charles Mann. See Charles C. Mann, 1491 (Vintage Books, 2011), 330.

  49. See, for example, Betty J. Meggers and Clifford Evans, “Archaeological Investigations at the Mouth of the Amazon,” Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 167 (1957), 1–664.

  50. Mann, 1491, 328.

  51. Wilkinson, “Amazonian Civilization?” 85.

  52. Ibid., 88.

  53. Anna Curtenius Roosevelt, “The Rise and Fall of the Amazon Chiefdoms,” L’Homme 33, no. 126 (1993), 255–283, and Anna C. Roosevelt, “The Development of Prehistoric Complex Societies: Amazonia, a Tropical Forest,” Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 9, no. 1 (1999), 13–33, cited in Wilkinson, “Amazonian Civilization?” 88.

  54. Neil Lancelot Whitehead, The Ancient Amerindian Polities of the Lower Orinoco, Amazon and Guayana Coast: A Preliminary Analysis of Their Passage from Antiquity to Extinction (Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1989), cited in Wilkinson, “Amazonian Civilisation?” 89.

  55. Michael J. Heckenberger et al., “Lost Civilizations and Primitive Tribes, Amazonia: Reply to Meggers,” Latin American Antiquity 12, no. 3 (September 2001), 331.

  56. Ibid., 329.

  57. Ibid., 332.

  58. Wilkinson, “Amazonian Civilization?” 89.

  59. The smallpox epidemic, to which the Aztecs had no immunity, was probably the single key factor that ensured Spanish victory in the conquest. By the time Cortes and his conquistadors finally captured Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, most of its inhabitants were already dead—from smallpox. It is thought likely that the Inca emperor Huayna Capac died of smallpox in 1528, four years before the arrival of Pizarro’s forces in Peru, indicating strongly that the virus had traveled on trade networks from Mexico. If those networks were exclusively coastal, then smallpox might not have reached the Amazon until 1542. If they had been inland, then it is possible it could have done so a decade or so earlier. See, for example, D. R. Hopkins, The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History (University of Chicago Press, 2002), 208–211: “The rumours of the Inca Empire that lured Balboa south were also evidence of communication, by land and by sea, between the Indians of Peru and those living in Central America.” The author goes on to say that when smallpox struck the land of the Incas sometime around 1524–1527, it was almost certainly smallpox imported from Central America.

  60. Ibid.

  61. Wilkinson, “Amazonian Civilization?” 89.

  62. Thomas P. Myers, “El efecto de las pestes sobre las poblaciones de la Amazonía Alta,” Amazonía Peruana 8, no. 15 (1988), cited in Wilkinson, “Amazonian Civilization?” 89.

  63. Ibid.

  64. Ibid.

  12: THE ANCIENTS BEHIND THE VEIL

  1. M. Goulding, R. B. Barthem, and R. Duenas, The Smithsonian Atlas of the Amazon (Smithsonian Books, 2003), 19: “Approximately 85 per cent of the South American rainforest … is found in the Amazon Basin.”

  2. S. Adams, A. Ganeri, and A. Kay, Geography of the World: The Essential Family guide to Geography and Culture (DK, 2006), 170.

  3. Ibid., 260.

  4. Ibid., 176.

  5. Ibid., 24.

  6. Ibid., 30.

  7. Ibid., 78.

  8. Tom D. Dillehay et al., “New Archaeological Evidence for an Early Human Presence at Monte Verde, Chile,” PLoS One (November 18, 2015), 3. The finds were “associated with the remains of a long tent-like dwelling, the foundation of another structure, hearths, human footprints, economic plants, and wood, reed, bone, and stone artifacts.”

  9. Ibid.

  10. Ibid., 1.

  11. Ibid., 2.

  12. Ibid., 4.

  13. David J. Meltzer et al., “On the Pleistocene Antiquity of Monte Verde, Southern Chile,” American Antiquity 62, no. 4 (October 1997), 662.

  14. Dillehay et al., “New Archaeological Evidence for an Early Human Presence at Monte Verde, Chile,” 12.

  15. Denis Vialou et al., “Peopling South America’s Centre: The Late Pleistocene Site of Santa Elina,” Antiquity 91 (August 2017), 865–884.

  16. Ibid., 867.

  17. Ibid., 870. In later millennia, during the Pleistocene/Holocene transition and into relatively recent times, Santa Elina rock shelter was reoccupied by humans on multiple occasions.

  18. Technically they are osteoderms—literally “bony skin,” from the extinct megafaunal ground sloth Glossotherium. Ibid., see esp. p. 875.

  19. N. Guidon and G. Delibrias, “Carbon-14 Dates Point to Man in the Americas 32,000 Years Ago,” Nature 321 (June 19, 1986), 769–771.

  20. Ibid., 769.

  21. Ibid., 771.

  22. Shigueo
Watanabe et al., “Some Evidence of a Date of First Humans to Arrive in Brazil,” Journal of Archaeological Science 30 (March 2003), 351.

  23. Ibid., 353–354.

  24. N. Guidon and B. Arnaud, “The Chronology of the New World: Two Faces of One Reality,” World Archaeology 23, no. 2 (October 1991), 167.

  25. Ibid., 168.

  26. Ibid., 168–169.

  27. Watanabe et al., “Some Evidence of a Date of First Humans to Arrive in Brazil,” 354. The authors, who see the skulls as having “Negroid charactaristics,” are also open to the possibility that the migration might have come “from Africa across the South Atlantic Ocean.”

  28. Distances calculated using Google Maps “distance from” tool. a) Nearest point of Xingu River to Santa Elina: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/15%C2%B019’58.8%22S+56%C2%B057’00.0%22W/@-12.986961,-55.1104767,7z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x0:0x0!7e2!8m2!3d-15.333!4d-56.95. b) Nearest point of Xingu River to Pedra Furada: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Pedra+Furada/@-11.5025045,-53.4068848,7z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x93309f3f46300909:0x13635ebcbb173337!8m2!3d-10.8772297!4d-47.3858913.

  29. A. C. Roosevelt et al., “Palaeoindian Cave Dwellers in the Amazon: The Peopling of the Americas,” Science 272 (April 19, 1996), 373–384.

  30. Ibid., 380.

  31. Ibid., 381.

  32. Data taken from the World Bank: “Land area (sq.km):” Mexico 1,943,950.0; Guatemala 107,160.0; Belize 22,810.0; Honduras 111,890.0; El Salvador 20,720.0; Total = 2,206,530. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.TOTL.K2

  33. Ibid., + India 2,973,190.0 = 5,179,720.

  34. See G. Hancock, Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization, (Michael Joseph, 2002), 629–630.

  35. “Antarctica’s Location and Geography” on Polar Discovery: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, http://polardiscovery.whoi.edu/antarctica/geography.html.

  36. Kerry H. Cook and Edward K. Vizy, “Detection and Analysis of an Amplified Warming of the Sahara Desert,” Journal of Climate 28 (2015), 6560, esp. 6561.

  37. See, for example, Nick A. Drake and Roger M. Blench, “Ancient Watercourses and Biogeography of the Sahara Explain the Peopling of the Desert,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (January 11, 2011), 458–462.

  38. Adams, Ganeri, and Kay, Geography of the World, 46.

  39. “Sprawling Maya Network Discovered Under Guatemala Jungle,” BBC, February 2, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-latin-america-42916261.

  40. Ibid. See also “Exclusive: Laser Scans Reveal Maya ‘Megalopolis’ Below Guatemalan Jungle,” National Geographic, February 1, 2018, https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/maya-laser-lidar-guatemala-pacunam/.

  41. Ibid.

  42. Ibid.

  13: BLACK EARTH

  1. A. C. Roosevelt et. al., “Palaeoindian Cave Dwellers in the Amazon: The Peopling of the Americas,” Science 272 (April 19, 1996), 380: “The luminescence dates ~ 16,000 to 9500 B.P. overlap the possible range of calendar dates estimated for the radiocarbon dates, ~ 14,200 to 10,500 yr B.P.” See also M. Michab et al., “Luminescence Dates for the Paleoindian Site of Pedra Pintada, Brazil,” Quaternary Science Reviews 17, no. 11 (1988), 1041–1046, esp. p. 1045: “While the luminescence dates lack the precision of the radiocarbon dates they confirm the fact that the cave was occupied between about 13,500 and 10,000 calendar years ago.”

  2. M. C. Castro and B. H. Singer, “Agricultural Settlement and Soil Quality in the Brazilian Amazon,” Population and Environment 34, no. 1 (2012), 22–43, esp. p. 23. Most Amazon base soils are weathered and lack good fertility. As a result, 75 percent of the agriculture practiced across the Amazon basin today requires the help of chemicals and machine technology to yield sustainable annual crops.

  3. Ibid., 40.

  4. Crystal N. H. McMichael et al., “Ancient Human Disturbances May Be Skewing Our Understanding of Amazonian Forests,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (January 17, 2017), 522.

  5. Manuel Arroyo-Kalin, Steps Towards an Ecology of Landscape: A Geoarchaeological Approach to the Study of Anthropogenic Dark Earths in the Central Amazon Region, Brazil (University of Cambridge Department of Archaeology, 2008), 11.

  6. Herbert Smith (1879) cited in Emma Morris, “Putting the Carbon Back: Black Is the New Green,” Nature 442 (August 10, 2006), 624.

  7. Arroyo-Kalin, Steps Towards an Ecology of Landscape, 11.

  8. See, for example, Morris, “Putting the Carbon Back,” 624, and Cornell University’s Department of Crop and Soil Sciences information page on terra preta, http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/research/terra%20preta/terrapretamain.html, which states: “‘Terra Preta de Indio’ (Amazonian Dark Earths; earlier also called ‘Terra Preta do Indio’ or Indian Black Earth) is the local name for certain dark earths in the Brazilian Amazon region.”

  9. B. Glaser and W. I. Woods (eds.), Amazonian Dark Earths: Explorations in Space and Time (Springer Verlag, 2004), 1.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Michael J. Heckenberger et al., “Pre-Columbian Urbanism, Anthropogenic Landscapes, and the Future of the Amazon,” Science (August 29, 2008), 1214–1217. The phrase “garden city” is applied to residence patterns adopted by the prehistoric urban settlements of the Upper Xingu—see p. 1217. See also the Daily Telegraph (London), August 28, 2008, which reports the contents of the Science paper under the headline “Amazon Rainforest Was Giant Garden City,” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3350474/Amazon-rainforest-was-giant-garden-city.html.

  12. Glaser and Woods, Amazonian Dark Earths, 3.

  13. Figures from Beata Golińska, “Amazonian Dark Earths in the Context of Pre-Columbian Settlements,” Geophysics, Geology and Environment 40, no. 2 (2014), 220, and Antoinette M. G. A. WinklerPrins, “Terra Preta: The Mysterious Soils of the Amazon,” in G. Jock Churchman and Edward R. Landa (eds.), The Soil Underfoot: Infinite Possibilities for a Finite Resource (CRC Press, 2014), 238.

  14. Stephen Schwartzman et al., “The Natural and Social History of the Indigenous Lands and Protected Areas Corridor of the Xingu River Basin,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (April 22, 2013), 3.

  15. See, for example, M. W. Palace et al., “Ancient Amazonian Populations Left Lasting Impacts on Forest Structure,” Ecosphere 8, no. 12 (December 2017), 3; Eduardo G. Neves et al., “Dark Earths and the Human Built Landscape in Amazonia: A Widespread Pattern of Anthrosol Formation,” Journal of Archaeological Science 42 (February 2014), 153; Charles R. Clement et al., “The Domestication of Amazonia Before European Conquest,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (July 22, 2015), 1, 3; and Arroyo-Kalin, Steps Towards an Ecology of Landscape, 11, 13.

  16. Ute Scheub et al., Terra Preta: How the World’s Most Fertile Soil Can Help Reverse Climate Change and Reduce World Hunger (Greystone Books, 2016), xv. See also Bruno Glaser and Jago Jonathan Birk, “Stage of Scientific Knowledge on Properties and Genesis of Anthropogenic Dark Earths in Central Amazonia (terra preta de Índio),” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 82 (2012), 49: “The existence of terra preta even several thousand years after their creation unambiguously shows that improvement of highly weathered tropical soils by human actions is possible.” For a quick overview, see also “Terra Preta: The Secret of the Rainforest’s Fertile Soil,” Facts Are Facts Magazine, https://www.facts-are-facts.com/article/terra-preta-the-secret-of-the-rainforests-fertile-soil.

  17. Schwartzman et al., “The Natural and Social History of the Indigenous Lands and Protected Areas Corridor of the Xingu River Basin,” 3.

  18. WinklerPrins, “Terra Preta: The Mysterious Soils of the Amazon,” 236. Emphasis added. See also Glaser and Woods, Amazonian Dark Earths, 4: “Most researchers believe that these soils formed in cultural deposits created through the accretion of waste and occupation debris around habitation areas.”

  19. Eduardo G. Neves et al., “Historical and Socio-cultural Origins of Amazonian Dark Earth” in Johannes Lehmann eds., Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin Properties Management (Springer,
2003), 29–50. See p. 40: “Possible sources of ADE in the context of habitation may be associated with burial activities (human remains, urns, cloth, etc.), food preparation (fire remains such as soot, ash, charcoal; food processing remains such as fish waste or waste from game, blood from hunted animals, inedible parts of fruit, vegetables and nuts, etc.; cooking and storage vessels, etc.), eaten food waste (human excrement, processed food waste such as bones of fish and game), housing (debris of housing materials such as straw or palm leaves, wood, skin), and various other activities (dyes, oils, fiber from palms and bark, etc.).”

  20. Neves et al., “Dark Earths and the Human Built Landscape in Amazonia,” 161.

  21. Ibid.

  22. “Thomas R. Miles has designed, developed, installed and tested agricultural and industrial systems for fuel handling, air quality, and biomass energy since 1975. An expert in combustion and gasification of biomass, he has designed and developed many systems to make biochar. He has sponsored and hosted internet discussions on biomass energy since 1994 including biochar@yahoogroups.com listservs and www.biochar.bioenergylists.org since 2006.” See http://2012.biochar.us.com/profile/116/thomas-r-miles.

  23. Tom Miles, “Amazon’s Mysterious Black Earth: Soil Found Along Region Riverbanks; Rich in Nutrients, Stores More Carbon,” BioEnergy Lists: Biochar Mailing Lists, January 20, 2007, http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/forestsorg.