US EditionArchaeological digs in Amazon provide clues about Indigenous inhabitants before colonization
Surveys tied to paving have found pottery, possible funerary urns and a 1,000-year-old stone monument, deepening evidence of linked Indigenous settlements.
- Archaeologists discovered pottery, funerary urns, and face-shaped artifacts at nine dig sites along the BR-156 highway in Brazil's northern state of Amapa, with findings reflecting influences from Para to the Caribbean.
- In Calcoene, scientists found a 1,000-year-old stone monument featuring 127 carved monoliths arranged in a 98-foot circle, positioned to mark the winter solstice sunrise in the Northern Hemisphere.
- Eduardo Neves, a University of Sao Paulo professor leading the Amazon Revealed project, says satellite scans reveal networks of roads linking large settlements, challenging assumptions of isolated Indigenous villages.
- Costa Leite, who manages the Archaeological Research Center at the Institute for Scientific and Technological Research, oversees about 530,000 artifacts, with the oldest confirming human presence in Amapa around 6,140 years ago.
- Archaeologist Manoel Fabiano da Silva Santos described the Amazon soil as a historic timeline, with deeper layers revealing Indigenous ceramics and upper layers showing Portuguese porcelain marking pre- and post-European occupation.
27 Articles
27 Articles
Archaeologists Find Artifacts of Amazon's Indigenous Inhabitants Before Colonization
The Calzoene’s ‘Stonehenge’. Credit: Leandroisola / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 Archaeological surveys tied to a highway project in Brazil’s Amapá state have uncovered artifacts from Amazon’s indigenous inhabitants who lived there long before European colonization reshaped the continent. Excavations at nine sites along the BR-156 highway produced pottery vases believed to be burial urns. Archaeologists also found small carved objects resemb…
Ceramic with influences from the Caribbean, Portuguese porcelain and a monument of 127 monoliths. Works in Amapá reveal nine archaeological sites. Indigenous past was much richer than thought.
The paving of roads in the Amazon jungle has long led to deforestation that threatens those living there. However, these same works have also allowed archaeologists to glimpse the past of the region, long before Europeans arrived to transform it.
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