Reading '1491' ... Apparently if you fly over Beni in eastern Bolivia you'll see an endless landscape of raised islands of forest, many of which are almost perfect circles. Connecting these islands are raised berms up to three miles long and perfectly straight.
Digging has found that some of the islands are built up / or have some portion of fired clay shards / ceramic; as if they were refuse piles; although on a massive scale beyond what it seems would be refuse. Some people ( Clark Erickson and William Balee ) think that this might have been a dense zigzagging network of earth fish weirs; effectively fisheries. They figure that it must have taken thousands of people to maintain such a system... let alone build it over time. Here's more on on the subject: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~cerickso/fishweir/articles/Erickson1994LASA.pdf http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cerickso/applied3.html http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cerickso/index.html I can't quite see this on google maps; perhaps somebody else might be able to find it: http://www.fallingrain.com/icao/SLSA.html ( apparently near Santa Ana Del Yacuma ) http://www.aguabolivia.org/situacionaguaX/Riego/mapas/mapapol.htm http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=13%C2%B0+45%27+44S+65%C2%B0+26%27+7W&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=12&t=h&om=1 Unfortunately no high resolution data here - maybe Nasa World Wind might do a better job. Why don't archeologists ever actually supply longitude and latitude? It's always "somewhere really far away that you can't be bothered to actually go look for but quite interesting really". In any case, this challenges the idea of 'primitive' or 'natural state' indians who only made small changes to their environment. It feels like there was an advanced biotechnics that we cannot see because of our prejudice. The entire landscape may have consisted of "anthropogenic" forests; created by humans to fit their needs... and there may be no "nature" to protect. - a _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
