What's Hidden Under the Amazon Rainforest? | Astrum Earth
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What hidden secrets lie beneath the Amazon rainforest?
The Amazon was one of the least explored places in modern history, but beneath its towering trees and twisting vines lies the memory of a hidden cityscape, a web of buildings, gardens, roads and canals, centuries old, swallowed by the wilderness itself, and for a while, lost completely. But what was once forgotten is now being rediscovered. Satellite imagery and laser scanning techniques have combined to bring a new version of the Amazon to life. A rainforest that's been shaped by humans for thousands of years, not only through spectacular buildings, but by manipulating entire ecosystems. Networks of creatures that were only just beginning to untangle. Those creatures make up 10% of the world's wildlife species, and a new plant or animal species is discovered every other day in this great forest.
But these aren't the only treasures hidden in the Amazon, whatever came of the lost city of El Dorado. I'm James Stewart and you're watching Astrum Earth. Join me in this video as we venture beneath the canopy to find a different story of the Amazon. From the early explorers that left clues centuries ago, to the modern science finally deciphering the code to uncover the true secrets hidden in the rainforest. And we'll be answering one big question. What still might be waiting to be found? With 6 million square kilometers of continuous green canopy, the Amazon comprises more than half of Earth's total remaining rainforest. For centuries, European explorers spread rumors amongst themselves that there was a legendary wealthy city deep in the Amazon.
They called it El Dorado, the City of Gold. In 1542, Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana reported travelling down the Amazon and finding vast rich lands, with farms, villages, and even large walled settlements. But when others later followed his route, they found only impenetrable jungle and small groups of hunter-gatherer tribes. Scientists assumed that Orianna's story was just that, a story. Nothing but the fanciful dreamings of a gold-hungry conquistador. But the search for El Dorado did not stop there, and actually it lasted for more than a century. Established explorers like Gonzalo Pizarro, Philip Von Hutten, and even Sir Walter Riley all led separate expeditions from 1541 to 1617. The result?
Well, nothing but disaster, death, and the further conquests of the indigenous people. But the allure of finding the unfindable endured well into the 20th century too, when British explorer Percy Fawcett became obsessed with finding the riches Oriana had described centuries earlier, fuelled by the fire of one main objective, to find what remained of a lost city he called Zed. He focused on the western Amazon in Bolivia, and the southern Amazon in Brazil, but found nothing. Along the way he did encounter indigenous people, but found them living in small villages. A far cry from the huge cities the rumours had promised. Rather than deter him, this seemed to spur him on even more. He even wrote to his wife in a letter that she need have no fear of failure.
Yet on the 29th of May 1925, on his eighth Amazonian expedition, Fawcett headed into the jungle from a place somewhere in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil known as Dead Horse Camp, never to be seen again.
How has LiDAR technology transformed our understanding of the Amazon?
For decades after this last hurrah, really, scientists concluded that this place was simply too hostile, too inhospitable for humans to thrive, and was largely just an expanse filled with exotic flora and fauna. Feedback among the scientific community was that the rainforest soil was so poor it simply could not sustain large-scale farming, and therefore cities were impossible. But they were all missing something, something that actually Fawcett had been onto. because it turns out he was looking roughly in the right places, but maybe he was looking for the wrong things. Now, up until this point, the rainforest had done a pretty phenomenal job of camouflaging its secrets. But just five years ago, everything changed.
scientists finally found the lost cities of the Amazon, because this time they had something these explorers didn't.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What hidden secrets lie beneath the Amazon rainforest?
0:00–4:03
2
How has LiDAR technology transformed our understanding of the Amazon?
4:03–9:37
3
What evidence supports the existence of ancient civilizations in the Amazon?
9:37–14:05
4
What was the significance of the legendary city of El Dorado?
14:05–26:27
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Astrum Space
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