The Washington Post writes "Scientists find evidence discrediting theory Amazon was virtually unlivable", discussing some archaeological research that supports the idea that large populations who adapted their environment lived in the pre-Columbian Amazon rain forest. It's a good thing research like this is brought to the attention of the general public.

The article glances at two important themes: that the number of Indians living in the Amazon was much greater than previously thought, and that they heavily influenced and transformed their environment - the Amazon is far from a 'virgin forest'. Juan Forero writes "Many of these ongoing excavations follow the work of Anna C. Roosevelt. In the 1980s on Marajo Island, at the mouth of the Amazon, she turned up house foundations, elaborate pottery and evidence of an agriculture so advanced she believes the society there possibly had well over 100,000 inhabitants."

But it's interesting to notice that research leading up to these new understandings had actually already started in the late 1950ies/early 60ies, with geographers Carl Sauer and William Denevan, among others. An excellent brief overview of the subject can be found in Denevan, The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492, available for all to download.

The title of this article already signals my second comment, namely that the findings in Amazonia should be seen as part of the bigger picture: that in all parts of the Americas the indigenous populations were substantially larger and their impact on ecology far more influential than generally assumed. The map on the right, taken from Denevan 1992, shows some features of the prehistoric cultural landscape in the Americas. Much of the research on these themes has been synthesized in the New York Times bestseller 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann. Another theme covered there is the debate on how old human habitation in the Americas is. This book is a must-read introduction if you want to know more about this, well-written and well-researched.

The WP article also mentions the use remote sensing, which was recently used for the first time in archaeological research - to map the Classic Maya ruins of Caracol. This technology may well (hopefully!) help uncover the so far hidden and unknown remains of civilizations such as the 'geoglyph culture' in Western Amazonia.

References

• Denevan, William M. 1992. The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, no. 3 (September): 369-385.
• Mann, Charles. 2005. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. 1st ed. New York: Knopf.