Scientists find ancient lost settlements
A vast region of the Amazon forest in Brazil was home to a complex of
ancient towns in which about 50,000 people lived, according to
scientists assisted by satellite images of the region.
The scientists, whose findings were published on Thursday in the
journal Science, described clusters of towns and smaller villages
connected by complex road networks and housing a society doomed by the
arrival of Europeans five centuries ago.
European colonists and the diseases they brought with them probably
killed most of the inhabitants, the researchers said. The settlements,
consisting of networks of walled towns and smaller villages organized
around a central plaza, are now almost entirely overgrown by the forest.
Reuters
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