How the “lost cities” of the Amazon were finally found 

I know Vox has other channels and commitments but please make more episodes of Atlas and at a faster rate. I love many of your series, especially borders, atlas and earworm. They just tickle my curiosity.

@@pavankumaryendru817 vox borders is cancelled

4:26 - That soil sure looks like it follows the the path of the river, which is the same burning method used up north.

Yay - There are people who think there was no outbreak of disease due to interacton.

Jesus loves you He died on the cross for our sins He's the only way to Heaven

Columbus did not discover the Americas ... He was the last of the explorers to put foot on land. Decades if not centuries before him the Clovis people, Vikings and even Chinese entered what is now Canada or Latin America.

@@yomommastupid Columbus was more the first man on America for the Europeans at that time, and it became widespread since European culture affected modern America the most. But we all know(at least people who know bit history) that he is not the first man on the continent nor the first outside man to enter America.

A third is I think a verry high estimate. I'm not sure that's supported. Most recent estimates put it at more like 50 million, which with the population of the rest of the world at 418 million in 1500 would equate to about 10.3%. The issue with much higher populations is food. Populations in Europe and Asia at this time were getting very large due to large scale relatively intensive agriculture becoming a thing. It's possible for archaeologists to not find a city, but to not see more traces of that kind of landscape transformation casts doubt that populations could have been over 100 million.

@@yomommastupid the Chinese never entered America that one has been disproved as a myth countless times

How can a disease travel by itself?

As a King, it's wonderful to see appropriate credit given to my equals

I'm currently reading 'The Dawn Of Everything' by Davids graebor and wengrow. I was wondering if you are familiar with this book / the authors work and what you think of it (interested to get an archaeologist's opinion)? It mentions the Amazonia city civilisations and stuff.

@@ruperthart5190 It is good but there are some shortcomings

May I remind you the hidden fact that indigenous Native American population in their motherland, the Continent of America before European Colonizers arrived was around 15 millions, while European population in their motherland, Continent of Europe was around 25 millions. Today, Native Americans population in their motherland is 15 million, while the European population, in the Continent of America + Europe, is a staggering 'TWO BILLIONS'!

@@supremelyeducated3273 My jaw dropped as I read indigenous Native American population in their motherland, the Continent of America before European Colonizers arrived was around 15 millions, while European population in their motherland, Continent of Europe was around 25 millions. Today, Native Americans population in their motherland is 15 million, while the European population, in the Continent of America + Europe, is a staggering 'TWO BILLIONS'! A sad truth. 🤔

ty

Yea and hilariously even after meeting the Muisca, they went: there must a bigger a city of gold thats actually called el darado and proceeded to yeet themselves into the amazon looking for a city they already found

The thing is that place isn't as elaborate as what people think El Dorado should be. Reality is oftentimes disappointing...

If it meant the city it would have been la dorada instead of el dorado

@@kapudanuderya It could still mean "The golden place" in spanish "El lugar Dorado" which would still make sense.

@@justayoutuber1906 they most likely died out from the dessease spread by the colonizers. After all dessease spreads faster than people tought at the time. So by the time they started going on exebitions to find anything everything would have been already gone

@@Zoidthelizard that's been proven wrong time after time but I'm not surprised since education on indigenous people history is really bad. Many people who studied mesoamerican cities have a theory that in reality the people that lived in those cities just straight up abandoned them the reason why they abandoned them could range from climate changes or politics. But we really don't why they abandoned them, all we know that it is very common to see in the americas.

@@ed4528 It has definitely not been proven wrong. I don't know about specific cities in Central America, but here in South America it has been pretty much proven that most settlements were destroyed by diseases brought by Europeans. I studied archeology in University here in Brazil, so I know that for a fact.

@@NankitaBR what I was referring to was the famous book called "guns, germs and steel" which was proven wrong by other archeologists as well as other historians and the book also created an issue where people automatically jump on the bandwagon all American indigenous died to diseases which is not true obviously, also the cities I was talking about were the ones located in central America and there you can also find settlements that were abandon by its own people. Heck the many plain nations in United States are even theorized to be the descendants of the mound builders which are located by the Mississippi River. I know this since I'm actually a dog typing this on the computer (I can lie about who I am too 😉)

@@ed4528 No one of merit disagrees that waves of disease caused the majority of deaths in the Americas. Have you even read that book? But even still, that book is pop-sci pseudo intellectual hogwash and has been debunked and regarded as nothing to take seriously by many scholars in related fields. So much of that book is just straight wrong. Too many laypersons with no outside knowledge or studies of these time periods come away with the most outrageous takes on the Americas as a result of that garbage.

When they zoomed into that indigenous park, the deforestation all around it made me wince. Huge shame what they’re doing to such an enormous asset.

Whats sad is that no one seem to preserve their own forest but want to tell brazil how to handle theirs. If everyone focused more locally the results world wide would be better.

@@notybussy6369 a lot of people don’t have the level of introspection needed to see this... everybody loves to say brazil should conserve its forests, and almost in the same breath wonders why it’s such a underdeveloped country... this is the answer: to develop you have to build farms and mines and cities, not build fences around a forest

@@thomaswilis4682 brazil could get MUCH richer and developed by researching the biodiversity of the Amazon and developing new science and products while preserving it than it ever will by deforestating everything to plant soybean and create cattle. Not to mention that the Amazon is being destroyed for cattle and mining but the meat doesn't feed the brazilian people, it gets exported while brazilians are falling into hunger once again, and the mining gets directly from the mine to the port to get manufactured somewhere else and then Brazil buys the final product again for double the price. a country doesnt get developed if its economy is based on commodities only and its people is starving.

@@SomeOne-yf3qq I don't cry. Never.

yeah, one of the unsettling things about history is over the decades we have found more and more civilizations that rose and fell, vanishing from the record. it is a useful cautionary tales since they believed they were advanced enough to be immune and eternal too.

lucky for us the next intelligent live that developes on this planet or visits this planet from outside after we are gone will still be able to see the shitloads of plastic we drowned the planet in ...

Someday it will probably happen to us to.

Aztecs were also sacrificing millions of people bc they thought it kept the Sun working. This was like 200 years after the cathedral of Notre dame was made for context lol

@@ralfliebau5706 But.... we have genderneutral toilets?

This comment is on every Vox post

@@londonmoren9611 😂😂😂😂 haha

Mmmn

Or you're a very sophisticated bot or you just like giving Vox compliments.

I'm trying to get a better understanding of your moist jungle, if you know what I mean.

It was not lost, the Spaniards mixed with the cultures that were there, the Mexicans, Peruvians, Colombians, etc. They would not be brown-skinned if it had been so.

They would be gone anyway, we can't go back in time and surely someone from Europe, Africa or Asia would eventually come into contact with south America

Sad to see those other two under your comment continue to sneer at the idea that there was anything at all of value in the peoples that were lost thanks to disease-and yes, they *were* lost, and anyone who even remotely believes that every single people group and culture survives to this day thanks to mestizaje is a tool, if not a grifter. Surely they wouldn't be the exact same, of course, but they'd exist in a way that they do not do now.

@@fernandoc5536 Cultures change over time.

imagine how many millions of europeans & asians also died from it before they developed resistance. Oh wait they never mention that

Yes Sir!

The sad news is that most of what is discovered today is because of deforestation of the Amazon

You're welcome to come to the amazin and dig around for clues.

It's a shame how most of them didn't develop a written language and how the people who could've tell us something about their history were basicaly wiped out.

​@@theviniso Same is true in Europe, before the Roman empire no one wrote anything down so for example, the only thing we know about the Germanics is what the Romans wrote down (which were at war with them). A lot is lost, everywhere, we only know the last maybe...2000 years or so.

We already know how to design soil mixtures. However the availability of cheap fertilizers makes it very difficult to finance any agricultural business that doesn’t rely on chemical fertilizers.

I highly, very highly doubt that those lands were the most fertile lands in the world. You realize just how many people lived along the Indus river alone even in ancient times, right?

@@ariyune7007 and in this video it said that millions of people could have lived there. So I would say the soil is very fertile

@@Username-le4eq I never said the soil was not fertile. I said that the original commenter was wrong for saying that it was the most fertile soil in the world. You can't just make up claims like that.

@@ariyune7007 I agree. The settlements were not as massive as equivalent settlements in the so called “old world”.

"uncontacted" is a bit of a news hype. these people interact with eachother and the rural parts of "civilization" in their countries.

Surviving in the rainforest is much less ‘complex’ Than building oasis in the desert where there’s no water …. Is ‘complex. ‘

There are actually very few groups in the world that are totally uncontacted, and even those that haven't engaged with modern society are aware of it to some degree (North Sentinelese people are aware of outsiders, certainly enough to attack them and drive them off). The vast majority have had some contact with each other, and with non-Indigenous people. The frequency or degree of contact, or what it entails, might differ, but it's rare for there to be people who have no idea that people unlike them exist. There's plenty of people in remote areas living a traditional lifestyle, but they know about the modern world, often because it encroaches on their territories (e.g. Brazilian illegal loggers in the Amazon).

Practically every primitive tribe in the Amazon and Indo-Pacific have been contacted, although you are correct in so far as that they haven't been incorporated into modern society.

I think is because different from Asian or European people, this civilizations did not record any historical data to tell people in the future about it. Our Brazilian culture is relatively nayv about that fact that we need to create historical data to support the culture.

To say their empire of 1/3 of the human population was “Uncharted” Is colonialist.

@@PedroBrazz Asian and African civilizations are well documented. Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, Nile-Egypt and Chinese Han are most prominent civilzations has data

@@fastinradfordable Maybe, but I don't think so. Even indigenous groups didn't know its existence, let alone us. So, in that way, it's safe to say it's uncharted for everyone, colonialist or not.

Long live the internet. Its a lot easier for a small brazilian youtuber to show us this, than the big sensacionalist media. What sells more? No wonder why TV is dying.

the only reason there's an amazon forest is because of the millions of natives that died when the new world came into contact. over years the rainforest used the thousands of thousands of bodies for nutrients.

For more information on how the common narrative of human history is wrong, i highly recommend "The Dawn of Everything: A New History for Humanity" by David Graeber and David Wengrow.

if I recall correctly, they actually had pretty extensive trade routes. the famed 'el dorado' was actually rich in salt, not gold, because salt was a really valuable trade item that had to be moved all around the continent. the spanish just had trouble understanding there was something valuable besides gold.

They had roads to each other so they definitely interacted

There is an old Portuguese or Spanish Explorer whose name I forgot that was treated as a liar for decades when he returned from an expedition to South America and Brazil, he said there were tall buildings made of wood and several natives every few miles down the river he took in the middle of the Amazon. One theory is that he was right indeed based on more recent studies and findings, the thing was as he was sailing down the river and stoping to make contact, he was also bringing diseases to those natives. As he set sail back to Europe, disaster was done already. Several natives got sick and the Shaman if you may of each settlement probably travelled to nearby villages in order to help and ended up bringing it back to their own home. He was treated as a liar because other expeditions decades later could not see tall buildings or natives at the river banks as that old explorer did. In a matter of years, probably those buildings would be consumed by the forest, not to mention the natives.

That's the thing about history. The "winners" write the books.

Norway and Sweden was conquered by the church in 12th century, yet we dont talk about it

@@felixliljegren That's because Norway and Sweden aren't brown (at least not yet)

Yep, when I think of the native american Buffalo jump I think of living in harmony with nature

@@BallawdeQuincewold Ok dude

Yes! I too hope that people will hand more land and power back to indigenous people.

@Zaydan Naufal thats what 40 years of communism do to countries

@Zaydan Naufal have you ever been to eastern europe? And btw the balkans apart bulgaria are in southern europe

🙏

He led his son and his son's friend to untimely deaths for nothing. After reading The Lost City of Z it becomes abundantly clear he never had any intentions of living a long life and he managed to lead those poor boys to their deaths in the process. Still an impressive man but hardly one to he deified.

​@@andrewman69 I'm not deifying anyone.

Over the 🌎 had and have it.

I read Percy fawcett’s memoir. He believed the city of Z was built by white Greek pre columbian travelers, and thought they came from atlantis. Kind of a wacko. There’s also some stories that definitely aren’t true, like him saying he met a race of ape men.

It's just so sad when people do that in otherwise well-made videos.

@@unladenswallow5693 the video was great and really informative, but it’s very annoying when someone makes a mistake about your country geography, especially because that’s a research the Vox Team could’ve done in 1 minute. I’m sorry, but that’s like saying the Grand Canyon is in Texas or Pyramids are in Palestine.

I'm not even Brazilian and I noticed that...

The pronunciation of Tenochtitlan also physically hurt me

could have been forest before being logged

In fairness to them, it would have been very difficult to recognise these patterns without sattelite imagery, 3D scanners and other modern technology. Not impossible, but certainly very tricky, especially if you don't know what you're looking for.

They were clearly looking for a bunch of abandoned buildings and castles like Europe or India has.

Hindsight 20/20. We've only recently discovered these things, with technology available that these people couldn't even begin to imagine. We've had satellite images since the 1950's and it still took us this long to get it, let alone with the primitive technology at the time

spoken like someone who knows very little about the subject; you're just trying to say good things about marginalized people to feel morally superior

I wonder what would have been if the disease brought overseas had never wiped these people out. Would the explorers have blended their ideals with the strong and healthy locals instead of waging and winning a war on an already depleted community both in health and strength in numbers?

@@ebiebertson7970 You and me both dude

His last name was orellana I believe, although it might have been a different one

You might be mentioning abouy Francisco de Orellana.

@@ebiebertson7970tbh, if diseases didn’t wiped my poeple out, wars would still happened, and the population of native Americans will keep growing and growing, and growing, until is like 1 billion people or even more, also people would of been able too keep there cultures and traditions it would most likely resemble Africa or Asia, mesoamerica would have had massive cities, the Inca empire also, there cities would grow into mega empires, and there would def be a new architecture, in the Americas, Europeans would grow tired of the wars and they would just want too trade, the Americas would have been absolutely populated, by millions upon millions of Amerindians.

Have a read of this book: The Discovery of the Amazon: According to the Account of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal and Other Documents.

Well, was it though?

I too am curious

@Poolerboy 0077 Fawcett reached Z. He died there.

@@jaddyrose9318 But did someone else eventually find it?

They were too late

I'd rather have some mysteries and not be so close to the end of times.

There are some new technologies that scan the land with drones and lasers and stuff, it gets some detailed pictures of the land "erasing the trees" using computers. It's really impressive, I've seen a video in English on youtube a while ago.

Yet we're far away from perfect. Titanic was only found in 1985 and we still have mysteries like MH370 to solve

They did have writing, just their records were mostly destroyed by Europeans

@@mwrees how do you know?

@@mwrees yes it's so sad that the europeans did this.

what do you think we would learn from them? how they sacrificed their own children and danced to the sky b/c they thought it would bring rain during dry seasons?

@@jgg204 I mean Europeans thought that there was a man who walked on water and turned water into wine… still do

in what sense

@@abraxasee8946 sustainable living and farming which is important because of climate change

@@user-sb8ks1ij7b In that aspect i agree with you

@@abraxasee8946 their culture and history as well as how they thrived in harsh conditions

@@user-sb8ks1ij7bEvery other nation in the world has mastered that. They're not uniquely special lol.

The real miracle, is that the Europeans managed to rebound after the Black Death.

this is gonna be my devious lick yet 😈

What things do they have from the Amazon because if so I want to see them

Where would those poor people there keep it then?

Uhh the people ruining the Amazon is the south american countries themselves. Nothing to do with colonisers . victim mentality.

We are still here but a lot of us are mixed with a degree of Spanish ancestry too bc of the colonization (we are called mestizo but I don't really use the term bc the history behind it)

@@Quixina it's a bit more complicated than that-imo it's useful to consider the three groups that Canada identifies as Indigenous: First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. The Inuit people are pretty different from the rest and are much more recent arrivals to the Americas, even though they have been in Canada for thousands of years-the First Nations have been here upwards of 10 or even 20 thousand years-so the Inuit have comparatively not been here as long-and then there's the Métis, which is like Mestizo but French, Métis communities formed when French colonizers intermarried with Indigenous folks in Canada-since the same did not happen during English colonization, there is no analogous Mixed group in English America but there are some mixed groups in the US that predate US colonization, like the Louisiana Creoles and Nuevomexicanos of Louisiana and New Mexico respectively-basically what I'm trying to say is that my interpretation of the original comment was more like "imagine a world in which the organizational and economic structures of First Nations remained the dominant ones" as opposed to "imagine a world in which the First Nations themselves still exist" maybe im being too generous though lol

Imagine if they were immune to European diseases.

Spoilers (at least in Colombia) most of them were displaced and or exterminated by the government, for example near where I live there was a small settlement of "Yariguies" that survived until the 20th century but, oil was found in their territory. and Standard oil aka Exxon wanted to exploit it, so... You can imagine the rest.

@@Quixina oh yes i am aware thank you. What i meant was if their nation had survived into the modern world (without the influence of European powers and etc). It'd be so cool to see the Aztec civilization as a country today don't it? Also, we too use "meztiso" here in the Philippines though i wonder since it doesn't have the same negative connotation here. Hmmm

On this movie the rivers are very narrow. They are very large. French 💋s to you from Brazil.

Yes, a great description of a stunning life.

@@grahamyates2490 👍

👍

@@justayoutuber1906 He is my brother. But very rich. I am very poor.

5:41

the reason why no major plagues hit europe after the age of exploration is because there are no tamable animals in the americas to transmit viruses to humans except extremely limited numbles of alpacas.

It's heavily exaggerated. The population in the Amazon was already in heavy decline by that point

@@vulcanmemes9770 So the genocides against the native people, the slavery, the atrocities and diseases committed by the European colonists were all heavily exaggerated? I don't see the European-descent in the America speak the native languages, worship native gods. Instead, I see them speaking English or Spanish, and worshipping Jewish gods. I see a systematic destruction of their culture and religion that is still ongoing to this day. I see one of the greatest cultural genocides committed by the Europeans, in history that is still ongoing.

That's mostly because how Europeans were more exposed to diseases because of large agricultural activities and multiple waves of plagues.

Europe has always been the hub of diseases.

This is not Amazon, is Cerrado is barelly next to the Brazilian capital, is a native Savannah of South America, is more next to Argentina or Bolívia, than to Amazon

Pantanal é mai pro MS e Paraguai, a parte mostrada, Mato Grosso, é Amazônia mesmo, inclusive o Xingu. O negócio é que a amazônia descia bem mais, até encontrar o pantanal justamente, mas o dematamento comeu boa parte desse "sul. Se você olhar no mapa hoje, Mato Grosso é quase todo cerrado, com uma mancha de amazônia que é a reserva do Xingu. O mesmo tá acontecendo em Rondônia.

@@ha22el5 Amém.

For your sake I hope you do not believe this

More incredible is how advanced the Europeans where. They where like 100years more advanced then the rest of the world. A race full of explores and scientist taking over the whole world just using theyr brains.

@@zeik04 I smell a racist

@@crazy_acid77 Yes you are the best example of the racist in 2022. Racism against white minoritys are the new norm these days.

@@crazy_acid77 Following the tried and true liberal agenda--when you don't like the facts, yell "racist".

@@zeik04 The Europeans were actually like 1000 years more advanced than the stone aged peoples they encountered in North America, and 500 years more advanced than the ones in South America.

Probably didn't have TikTok

given the fact that the decendents of those people are still around, still maintaining many of their ways although the effort of colonization is ongoing, the simplest answer should be: these people thrive as the forest. they are one kinship as we all are, though most of us have been long disconnected from our roots. the european "civilization" that came to conquer has been uprooted for the longest time, taken over by nonsense ideas of static space and abstractions. They were, and still are, unable to recognize the ways of the forest eairth, spreading deserts where they go. incredible to see how much they have already killed and wasted, from fertile crescents to the oldest growth. and still, not all is lost, some people regain their sense of wholeness, nomadness. someday, every city will have grown to be a food forest, home and habitat for all our kin, two-legged and all from feathered to rhizomatic, mycelial. healthy soils and healthy souls. the old ways have come to pass. the way of the spheres awaits.

Well, Brazilian here, and what you might want to look into are the current indigenous communities that live there, and other such communities that have made the Amazon their home outside of Brazilian state power. There are the Ribeirinhos, which roughly translates to people of the rivers margins, which are very mixed communities. There are the Quilombolas, which live in the ancient Quilombos, which were secret and isolated towns, more like fortresses really, where enslaved people fled to during colonial times, and later in the Brazilian empire days. Today they exist as these very traditional communities that incorporate indigenous and African techniques for survival. Kind of amazing really.

@@sabinasabino141 yes, thank you for bringing them up. there is much ongoing existence that the powers of "civilization" struggle to silence and erase. and as magnificent as the remains of "pre-colombian" cities in the amazon are, the fetish of the colonized mind for grandeur, treasure, power and status shines clearly through, even in these comments. people dreaming about the greatness of civilizations lost just as the same story keeps unfolding and the living people are being forced off their lands, off their ways, to get rid of them in order to exploit their "natural resources". Salve Amazonia, quema babylonia...

Pog

Same

Fr

Same

Same

: you can find it in the site of APM music under that name.

Not sacrifices, but throw gold artefacts and esmeralds to the lake

That pfp fits this comment too well

If they want more attention maybe they shouldn't be hiding deep in the Amazon huh?

Civilization ? The first civilization in australia was the western one. Before White people there wasnt any city in the continent.

@@easterworshipper730 That was the question I was asking because we don't know. You cannot affirm a certain viewpoint when new information can be discovered, which is why you have to eekp an open and considerate mind. Even if there were never old-world-style cities and cultures we cannot understate the importance of the Australian Aboriginal peoples. Scientists have also confirmed that Aboriginal Australians are indeed the world's oldest continuous sivilisation by definition -- not just whether they were obligated to develop massive cities, but through society and living with tremendous knowledge of the Land. I ask out of curiosity, and due to the number of civilisations who were killed off by disease and genocide recently, as well as transformed over millennia due to climate change (such as the last ice-age where megafauna disappeared, as well as dry spells, sea-level changes, floristic changes such as rainforests turning to desert -- the most extreme changes all within human habitation). For instance, there could have been other types of settlement such as described in the video, where the evidence erodes over time and we don't know. It may be carried on through oral tradition (such as ancient astronomical or climate events). In the recent 3,000 years, and through European documentation and modern Australian archaeology, we know of many types of settlements which did exist, and which often unfortunately were destroyed and lost during the turmoil of invasion (including whole cultures, in what has been termed by the coiner of "genocide" in Tasmania as one key example). In Tasmania's west, where two nations are no no longer with us, there is documentary description of permanent or semi-permanent villages, the construction of these climate-protective structures, the local economy and traditions, and how trade was conducted over the central highlands with the other nations, the east were not 2 metres tall like them. One of the largest towns I know about, was of the Budj-Biim eel-farmers in Victoria (not mentioning the continental trade system), which were made of 300 stone hut remains, and a complex sustained farming system 6,600 years old, making it the world's oldest and largest. But what records do we have od before that? What wonders have we yet to discover or be storied? So, it is really important to nurture the ancient knowledge which persists to this day and into the future, with all the incredibly important things we can learn about these Lands and the world around us, as well as to consider our own place in it, mortality, community, and living life connected to what matters.

@@betula2137 Australia Is not even a abo Word. What civilization ? Name one city those people founded.

@@easterworshipper730 You just rephrased the same question and are now sticking to semantics, which will literally get nowhere. Just reconsider yourself in the meantime

@@betula2137 im sorry bud, but no cities, no civilization. Civilization comes from the Word civitas that literally means "city" So... Name one city Is these "old civilizations ever"

i need 20 minute long history vox videos

Look up Graham Hancock if this interests you

Why tf are they're videos so short ??? Just why?