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| Science & Technology |
| Missouri archaeologists hunt for ancient civilization in the Amazon: 'Chasing big goals' |
| 2025-09-21 |
| [FoxNews] Two archaeologists from the American heartland are embarking on an Amazonian adventure to uncover the remains of a lost civilization — proving that world-class research can emerge from the Ozarks just as easily as it can come from Ivy League schools. Missouri State University research archaeologists Daniel Pierce and Christopher Bodine are heading to Brazil this fall to study geoglyphs — large designs or motifs on the ground made of natural materials. The two founded the Terra Incognita Research Institute to uncover the past and make their discoveries accessible to the public. Their latest efforts are part of the GOJIRA project, short for Geoglyph Observations through Jungle Imagery in Remote Amazonia. The pair will be going into the jungle, off-trail, to study these features more closely. Using LiDAR technology, they've identified structures that have been hidden away for several centuries beneath the jungle canopy — structures found only recently due to deforestation in the Amazon. Pierce described geoglyphs as "large manmade design[s] on the earth, often created using stones or mounded soil," he said. "In the Amazonian geoglyphs, at least the ones that have been discovered thus far, we see more geometric shapes, such as giant circles, squares [and] crosses," Pierce told Fox News Digital. "Some of these are as small as 70 feet across, or as large as 400 feet across." Pierce added that he and Bodine are "really just scratching the surface," of the project, and they don't know how old the geoglyphs are, or who built them, just yet. "These glyphs are perhaps the first evidence we have of a completely unknown ancient civilization," Pierce observed. "Overall, typically geoglyphs are so large that they can’t even be seen from the ground itself, but must be viewed from the air. … This is what makes them so amazing." He added, "How did ancient people design them so perfectly to be seen from above, when they themselves could not see them from above? It's truly amazing stuff." Pierce said that while he doesn't expect to find El Dorado, he believes the geoglyphs may have been part of "a large-scale complex civilization … [perhaps] along the lines of some of the large moundbuilders in the United States, such as the Mississippians at the famous Cahokia Mounds." |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
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| Posted by: Grom the Affective 2025-09-21 12:32 |