Today, we often see the Amazon basin as an endless expanse of trees and rainforest. But 2,000 years ago, at the same time that great cities like Rome, Athens and Alexandria were at their height, this massive area of South America was home to a huge range of landscapes, biodiversity and ancient Amazonian civilisations.In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by author and journalist Laurence Blair - whose new book Patria: Lost Countries of South America is out today - to explore the extraordinary cultures that lived all across the ancient Amazon basin and unpack stories of agriculture, farming and fish-fuelled cities that go back 8,000 years.Presented by Tristan Hughes. The audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, it was produced by Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off your first 3 months using code ‘ANCIENTS’. https://historyhit.com/subscriptionYou can take part in our listener survey here.
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2,000 years ago, at the same time that great cities like Rome, Athens and Alexandria were at their height in the Mediterranean, thousands of miles to the west across the Atlantic Ocean, equally large and thriving cities were being constructed in the ancient Amazon. Epicentres of extraordinary, little-known civilisations who moulded the world's largest rainforest to thrive in their millions.
Today, we often see the Amazon basin as an endless expanse of trees and rainforest, but this massive area of South America, spanning eight countries, was home to a huge range of landscapes, biodiversity and ancient civilizations.
The ancient Amazon is a story of agriculture and farming stretching back 8,000 years, of fish-fuelled civilisations along the coast, of cities and highways, of beautiful ceramics and art and maybe even of an Amazonian Pompeii situated beneath a still smouldering volcano. It's the Ancients on History Hit.
I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode well we're exploring the extraordinary ancient civilizations that lived all across the ancient Amazon basin in South America. This area of the world is one of the most exciting for archaeologists right now because new technological advancements are starting to uncover a whole range of ancient sites beneath the trees.
Sites that belonged to prosperous, well-organised, urbanised societies spread out across a densely populated and richly diverse landscape. To talk through this story, I was delighted to interview the journalist, writer and author Lawrence Blair, who has just written a new book that explores these vanished civilizations of the ancient Amazon and more.
Lawrence, he dialed in from South America for this interview, so we were incredibly grateful for his time. Now sit back and enjoy as we cover the story of the ancient Amazon. Lawrence, it is great to have you on the podcast.
Thanks so much for having me, Tristan. Really pleased to be here.
I mean, the Amazon and the ancient Amazon. I must admit, when Tom mentions the Amazon today, it still feels, at least to me, quite like a frontier area, Lawrence, with uncontacted peoples and so on. Absolutely. But looking at what you've written and the research, this needs to be an area full of amazing different ancient civilizations that were there thousands of years ago.
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