More on the Lost Civilizations of the Amazon

Nice review article by Juan Forero in the Washington Post about the archaeology of the Amazon. Since the work of Anna Roosevelt in the 1980s on Marjo Island near the river's mouth, which

turned up house foundations, elaborate pottery and evidence of an agriculture so advanced she believes the society there possibly had well over 100,000 inhabitants.

Archaeologists have made an unending string of discoveries. A few highlights from the article:

Along the Xingu, an Amazon tributary in Brazil, Michael Heckenberger of the University of Florida has found moats, causeways, canals, the networks of a stratified civilization that, he says, existed as early as A.D. 800. In Bolivia, American, German and Finnish archaeologists have been studying how pre-Columbian Indians moved tons of soil and diverted rivers, major projects of a society that existed long before the birth of Christ.

As with the Mississippian societies of North America, the most striking thing to me about these Amazon societies is how quickly they were forgotten. They seemed to be in full flower when Gaspar de Carvajal sailed down the river in 1541, but by 1700, when Europeans got to know the river well, they had disappeared. Not only that, but the natives did not even seem to remember them.