Mysterious figures in the cleared jungle.
On the border of Brazil and Bolivia, giant trenches were found, built long before the arrival of Europeans in the region. The researchers considered them to be traces of an ancient civilization
The authors of the study themselves, in their article published in the British journal Antiquity, do not use this name and report that so far they have found only giant trenches on the border of Brazil and Bolivia. They stretch for 250 km and form regular geometric shapes - rectangles, circles, squares. The structures have been discovered by scientists from the air thanks to Google Earth satellite images taken since 1999. After analyzing photographs of lands exposed as a result of deforestation, the researchers traveled to Latin America to study the strange trenches up close.
As reported in a press release by Antiquity, the recesses are about 11m wide and about half a meter deep. The authors of the study believe that for the construction it was necessary to drive a lot of people, which is possible only with a developed civilization. Many lines are symmetrical to each other and are made in the same style.
Strange dating …
Some of the trenches are surrounded by small fences, and in some places there are low mounds, inside which researchers have found ceramics, coal and stone tools.
The head of the study, Martti Parsinnen, took a sample of coal to the University of Helsinki, where he dated the material by radiocarbon analysis to 1244-1378, after which he concluded that the entire complex of trenches he discovered should be built by the 13th-14th centuries. Why Parsinnen's team did not conduct additional dating and at least did not establish the age of the stone tools is not clear from the study. Parsinnen's professional profile is also unclear: Antiquity does not say anything about his specialization and only mentions that the scientist is related to the Madrid Institute for Finnish Studies in Latin America.
Observers of the British publications Independent and Guardian, who enthusiastically accepted the information about the discovery of Eldorado, did not question the calculations of scientists and, for some reason, preferred not to recall other abandoned cities found earlier in the jungle of the Amazon.
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… And other inconsistencies
“Giant trenches were used for fortifications, houses, temples. This settlement could have been home to 60 thousand people - more than in the cities of medieval Europe,”writes the Guardian, without explaining what these demographic estimates are based on.
Parsinnen's aide Denise Schaan from the University of the Brazilian State of Para gave an interview to National Geographic, in which she said that the discovery refutes the theory of soil poverty in the upper Amazon, from which researchers previously concluded that the existence of El Dorado in the region was improbable. “We found that this is not the case. There is still a lot to be discovered here, the process does not stop. We find new structures every week,”Schaan said proudly.
In her work, she and her Finnish leader call the strange trenches "geoglyphs", fundamentally changing the concept of research. Pre-Columbian geoglyphs, unlike El Dorado, are more or less familiar to historians and are located on the other side of the Andes, in the territory of modern Peru. Their creators, mainly the extinct peoples of the Nazca and Paracas, created giant messages to the gods from sketches based on knowledge of the composition of soils, the influence of the sun and weathering.
Representatives of prestigious world universities have not yet commented on the Finnish study. The Brazilian media did not react to his appearance.