Archaeologists Find 'Lost Civilization' in Bolivia

When 16th-century Spanish missionaries first wandered into the tropical lowlands of modern Bolivia, they found a few scattered villages, and everyone since then assumed the area was too inhospitable to support large communities. The region has two harsh seasons, extremely dry and extremely wet, and the dense forest made exploration nearly impossible, until now. Scientists from Germany and the UK used lidar—short for light detection and ranging, a remote-sensing method that generates 3D images of surfaces—to penetrate the canopy. Per the Wall Street Journal, their findings “upend long-held beliefs among many experts that the region lacked sophisticated societies” in pre-Hispanic times. The research also shows that lidar is a game-changing tool for research in remote, heavily forested areas.

Scientists used a lidar-equipped helicopter to scan 77 square miles of Bolivian jungle. The resulting images revealed 26 settlements, 11 of which were previously unknown and all of which were interconnected by a system of roads, canals, and causeways arranged in roughly concentric circles around two major sites. Little is known about the Casarabe people who built them, but the sites include burial mounds, massive earthen platforms, and the remains of eight-story pyramids, suggesting a rich culture and an enormous investment of labor. Per LiveScience, one researcher referred to it as “low-density tropical urbanism” that proves the region was once densely populated.

The Casarabe used a system of canals and reservoirs to manage water and maintain successful agricultural strategies between 600 and 1,500 years ago. According to Sci News, the settlements were constructed “not at odds with nature, but alongside it.” Aside from the dense canopy, the sites were concealed as a result of Casarabe building methods, which relied on tamped dirt rather than stone. “At the time, it looked really fabulous, but it just doesn’t hold up like stone,” wrote one archaeologist, per the WSJ. Researchers speculate that an extended dry period led to the collapse of Casarabe culture, and the forest quickly reclaimed their earthen settlements. The findings were published this week in the journal Nature. (More archaeology stories.)