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Thanks to Google Earth, Mythical Amazonian City May Prove to Be Real

by Lee Bains on January 12, 2010 at 03:54 PM

This is not to say that scientists aren't cool. Really, it's not. But back in the day, when dank laboratories were festooned with wacky schematics and bright bubbling beakers, when workshops were cluttered with ratcheting Thing-A-Ma-Jigs and whirring What-Cha-Ma-Call-Its, scientists were really cool. And coolest among them, the James Deans of scientists, were the archaeologists and anthropologists -- those intrepid explorers who, armed with nothing more than ancient maps and wanderlust, struck out for uncharted territories, searching Creation for the wonders of antiquity. Of course, at some point in the 20th century, everybody got all uppity all of a sudden, demanding "proof" for this and "evidence" for that, and explorers like Percy Fawcett, and his unwavering belief in the Amazonian "Lost City of Z," were left out in the cold.

But just because he couldn't show the proof didn't mean it wasn't there.

Nearly a century since Fawcett disappeared from the Amazon in 1925, and from the very face of the earth, it seems (some say into a portal to another dimension), Google Earth satellites have yielded photographs of what appear to be the ruins of a 700-year-old city, deep in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. Situated near the border of Brazil and Bolivia, the easily discernible geometric shapes in the above photo are believed by researchers to be the earthen infrastructure of a forgotten civilization -- one that might have been host to as many as 60,000 people, and that might turn out to be the fabled Lost City of Z, or El Dorado.

Using the Google Earth images to help them find their way, the archaeological team of Martti Parssinen, Denise Schaan, and Alceu Ranzi began excavating the site in 2006 and soon uncovered 200 earthen structures, among them ruined roads, bridges, moats, and plazas. Still, in an article published within the journal Antiquity, the archaeologists assert that they've only excavated 10-percent of the city. What's more to be found is anybody's guess. Amerigo Vespucci, of course, believed his namesake Americas to host the fountain of youth. The conquistadors of the 16th century were convinced that a city of gold lay somewhere in the heart of South America. Sure, you can call those men crackpots -- the products of overdeveloped imaginations and underdeveloped sense. But that's what they said about Percy Fawcett. [From: Times Online and Antiquity]

Tags: archaeology, google, googleearth, science

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