Amazon rainforest: Explorer maps out complex lost civilizations of the Amazon

In 1925 British adventurer Colonel Percy Fawcett disappeared into the wilds of the Amazon, never to be heard from again after going there in search of a lost city he called Z. But decades later, a city of sorts—actually a series of settlements connected by roads—has been found at the headwaters of the Xingu River where Fawcett went missing in an area previously buried beneath the dense foliage in what is now Xingu National Park.

Adventurers have long scoured Brazil's vast Amazon rainforest for traces of hidden cities buried deep in the jungle. But new research shows the country's dense and inhospitable jungles were once home to an intricate network of towns and roads built by one of the world's earliest urban civilisations.

"These places were far more organised than your average medieval town," anthropologist Professor Mike Heckenberger, from the University of Florida, told the Guardian.

Uma vasta região da floresta Amazônica situada dentro das fronteiras brasileiras abrigou um complexo de habitações antigas nas quais moravam cerca de 50 mil pessoas, afirmaram cientistas que analisaram imagens de satélite referentes a essa área.

Os pesquisadores, cuja descoberta foi publicada na quinta-feira, na revista Science, descreveram conjuntos de casas e pequenos vilarejos ligados por uma complexa rede de estradas e abrigando uma sociedade condenada à extinção com a chegada dos europeus ao continente, cinco séculos atrás.