New evidence about when, where, and how chickens were domesticated

 ew research transforms our understanding of the circumstances and timing of the domestication of chickens, their spread across Asia into the west, and reveals the changing way in which they were perceived in societies over the past 3,500 years.

Experts have found that an association with rice farming likely started a process that has led to chickens becoming one of the world's most numerous animals. They have also found evidence that chickens were initially regarded as exotica, and only several centuries later used as a source of 'food'.

Previous efforts have claimed that chickens were domesticated up to 10,000 years ago in China, Southeast Asia, or India, and that chickens were present in Europe over 7,000 years ago.

The new studies show this is wrong, and that the driving force behind chicken domestication was the arrival of dry rice farming into southeast Asia where their wild ancestor, the red jungle fowl, lived. Dry rice farming acted as a magnet drawing wild jungle fowl down from the trees, and kickstarting a closer relationship between people and the jungle fowl that resulted in chickens.

This domestication process was underway by around 1,500 BC in the Southeast Asia peninsula. The research suggests that chickens were then transported first across Asia and then throughout the Mediterranean along routes used by early Greek, Etruscan and Phoenician maritime traders.

During the Iron Age in Europe, chickens were venerated and generally not regarded as food. The studies have shown that several of the earliest chickens are buried alone and un-butchered, and many are also found buried with people. Males were often buried with cockerels and females with hens. The Roman Empire then helped to popularise chickens and eggs as food. For example, in Britain, chickens were not regularly consumed until the third century AD, mostly in urban and military sites.

The international team of experts re-evaluated chicken remains found in more than 600 sites in 89 countries. They examined the skeletons, burial location and historical records regarding the societies and cultures where the bones were found. The oldest bones of a definite domestic chicken were found at Neolithic Ban Non Wat in central Thailand, and date to between 1,650 and 1,250 BC.

The team also used radiocarbon dating to establish the age of 23 of the proposed earliest chickens found in western Eurasia and north-west Africa. Most of the bones were far more recent than previously thought. The results dispel claims of chickens in Europe before the first millennium BC and indicate that they did not arrive until around 800 BC. Then, after arriving in the Mediterranean region, it took almost 1,000 years longer for chickens to become established in the colder climates of Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia and Iceland.

The two studies, published in the journals Antiquity and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were carried out by academics at the universities of Exeter, Munich, Cardiff, Oxford, Bournemouth, Toulouse, and universities and institutes in Germany, France and Argentina.

Professor Naomi Sykes, from the University of Exeter, said: "Eating chickens is so common that people think we have never not eaten them. Our evidence shows that our past relationship with chickens was far more complex, and that for centuries chickens were celebrated and venerated."

Professor Greger Larson, from the University of Oxford, said: "This comprehensive re-evaluation of chickens firstly demonstrates how wrong our understanding of the time and place of chicken domestication was. And even more excitingly, we show how the arrival of dry rice agriculture acted as a catalyst for both the chicken domestication process and its global dispersal."

Dr Julia Best, from Cardiff University said: "This is the first time that radiocarbon dating has been used on this scale to determine the significance of chickens in early societies. Our results demonstrate the need to directly date proposed early specimens, as this allows us the clearest picture yet of our early interactions with chickens."

Professor Joris Peters, from LMU Munich and the Bavarian State Collection of Palaeoanatomy, said: "With their overall highly adaptable but essentially cereal-based diet, sea routes played a particularly important role in the spread of chickens to Asia, Oceania, Africa and Europe."

Dr Ophélie Lebrasseur, from the CNRS/Université Toulouse Paul Sabatier and the Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Pensamiento Latinoamericano, said: "The fact that chickens are so ubiquitous and popular today, and yet were domesticated relatively recently is startling. Our research highlights the importance of robust osteological comparisons, secure stratigraphic dating and placing early finds within their broader cultural and environmental context."

Professor Mark Maltby, from Bournemouth University, said, "These studies show the value of museums and the importance of archaeological materials to reveal our past."

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Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Exeter. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal References:

1. Julia Best, Sean Doherty, Ian Armit, Zlatozar Boev, Lindsey Büster, Barry Cunliffe, Alison Foster, Ben Frimet, Sheila Hamilton-Dyer, Tom Higham, Ophélie Lebrasseur, Holly Miller, Joris Peters, Michaël Seigle, Caroline Skelton, Rob Symmons, Richard Thomas, Angela Trentacoste, Mark Maltby, Greger Larson, Naomi Sykes. Redefining the timing and circumstances of the chicken's introduction to Europe and north-west Africa. Antiquity, 2022; 1 DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2021.90
2. Joris Peters, Ophélie Lebrasseur, Evan K. Irving-Pease, Ptolemaios Dimitrios Paxinos, Julia Best, Riley Smallman, Cécile Callou, Armelle Gardeisen, Simon Trixl, Laurent Frantz, Naomi Sykes, Dorian Q. Fuller, Greger Larson. The biocultural origins and dispersal of domestic chickens. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022; 119 (24) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2121978119

Rock art cave in Spain was used by ancient humans for over 50,000 years

 A cave in southern Spain was used by ancient humans as a canvas for artwork and as a burial place for over 50,000 years, according to a study published June 1, 2022 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by José Ramos-Muñoz of the University of Cadiz, Spain, and colleagues.

Cueva de Ardales, a cave in Málaga, Spain, is famous for containing over 1,000 paintings and engravings made by prehistoric people, as well as artifacts and human remains. However, the nature of human usage of this cave has not been well-understood. In this study, the authors present the results of the first excavations in this cave, which shed light on the history of human culture in the Iberian Peninsula.

A combination of radiometric dating and analysis of remains and artifacts within the cave provide evidence that the site’s first occupants were likely Neanderthals over 65,000 years ago. Modern humans arrived later, around 35,000 years ago, and used the cave sporadically until as recently as the beginning of the Copper Age. The oldest rock art in the cave consists of abstract signs such as dots, finger tips, and hand-stencils created with red pigment, while later artwork depicts figurative paintings such as animals. Human remains indicate the use of the cave as a burial place in the Holocene, but evidence of domestic activities is extremely poor, suggesting humans were not living in the cave.

These results confirm the importance of Cueva de Ardales as a site of high symbolic value. This site provides an incredible history of human activity in Spain, and along with similar sites – there are more than 30 other caves in the region with similar paintings – makes the Iberian Peninsula a key locality for investigating the deep history of European culture.

The authors add: “Our research presents a well-stratified series of more than 50 radiometric dates in Cueva de Ardales that confirm the antiquity of Palaeolithic art from over 58,000 years ago. It also confirms that the cave was a place of special activities linked to art, as numerous fragments of ochre were discovered in the Middle Palaeolithic levels."

 the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0266788

Industrial manufacturing of wool and wool textiles in the Bronze Age Italy

Montale in northern Italy can have been one of the earliest centres in Europe for production of wool during the Bronze Age. Production may also have been on an industrial scale. Archaeologist Serena Sabatini has drawn this conclusion after having analysed archaeological finds in the form of textile tools and teeth from sheep and goats.

"We understood that this was an intense production because of the large amounts of textile tools at the settlement. We then analysed the teeth to better understand how the production of wool was organised."

Archaeology is increasingly using methods from the natural sciences. Serena Sabatini, archaeologist and associate professor at the Department of Historical Studies, works with researchers at the Danish National Museum to utilise strontium isotope analyses in her research.

Within the research project “Bronze Age wool economy: production, trade, environment, husbandry and society”, she collected teeth from sheep/goats from the Bronze Age settlement at Montale in northern Italy. The material was analysed to measure the strontium isotope values contained in those bones.

Analyses reveal the answers

Strontium is a mineral that is present in both food and water, and it is absorbed in human, animal and plant tissues. 

“Strontium values in teeth and the temporal bone accumulate in childhood and do not change in adulthood. This allows the determination of whether individuals spend their childhood in the area where they were buried or if they moved there as an adult or adolescent. It is similar for animals, and in this research project we have analysed teeth from sheep and goats to investigate animal mobility in the landscape,” says Serena Sabatini.

During the Bronze Age, one considers that both people and animals likely ate food and drank water from the surrounding area. Thus, the values that can be recorded in their bones and tissues likely correspond to specific areas where they were born or grew up and moved to.

Large scale wool production

The results of the analyses show that most of the animals were raised in the Montale area where they also died; thus, they were likely closely managed by the community living at the site. This in turn confirms previous theories about their importance in large-scale local wool production.

“We should also be aware that sheep during the Bronze Age did not produce as much wool as today’s sheep", says Serena Sabatini.

Previous research from the Mediterranean area, where written sources were available, shows that it took a full year to produce 3 kilograms of wool. This required a mixed flock of ten sheep, with both adults and lambs. To be able to weave a simple cloth of 3.5 metres by 3.5 metres required 4 kilograms of raw wool.

“You can understand immediately that organising an economically sustainable and profitable production of wool fibres required managing large numbers of sheep flocks.”

The history of wool

Interest in the study of textile production, particularly wool production, throughout history has been increasing in recent years.

“The purpose of this project is to reveal the importance of wool and the production of wool textiles in the European Bronze Age,” says Serena Sabatini.

Recent studies indicate that during the 2nd millennia BCE certain continental centres, like Montale in northern Italy that was part of the Terramare culture, succeeded in understanding the economic importance of wool.

“Thanks to particularly favourable social and environmental conditions, they were able to specialise in the production of wool and likely exported wool, wool yarn or perhaps even woven wool textiles. They were then able to trade wool and textiles for goods not available in the area.!

The study is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. Investigating sheep mobility at Montale, Italy, through strontium isotope analyses.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2021.103298

Contact:
Serena Sabatini, associate professor in archaeology at the Department of Historical Studies.
Phone: +46 (0)31-786 52 17, email: serena.sabatini@archaeology.gu.se

Facts: The research project “Bronze Age wool economy: production, trade, environment, husbandry and society”.

The research project “Bronze Age wool economy: production, trade, environment, husbandry and society” was funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and took place 2016–2019. Sophia Bergerbrant was the project leader.

The main goal was to understand and interpret the impact of introducing wool textiles in Europe on sheep husbandry, the economy, trade, the environment and society at large. The study draws upon well-documented material from Hungary and northern Italy that have indications of extensive textile production.

 The ‘Terramare’ culture in the Po Valley, Italy

• The term Terramare culture is used to define the Bronze Age societies that inhabited the central part of the Po Valley between c. 1600 BCE and 1200 BCE.
• The name Terramare comes from terra marna, which is the local dialect’s term to define the dark and fertile soil that characterised the numerous small hills of the Po plain. The hills turned out to be remains of Bronze Age settlements.

Archaeology: First Pompeiian human genome sequenced

 

The first successfully sequenced human genome from an individual who died in Pompeii, Italy, after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE is presented this week in a study published in Scientific Reports. 

: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10899

Prior to this, only short stretches of mitochondrial DNA from Pompeiian human and animal remains had been sequenced.

Gabriele Scorrano and colleagues examined the remains of two individuals who were found in the House of the Craftsman in Pompeii and extracted their DNA. The shape, structure, and length of the skeletons indicated that one set of remains belonged to a male who was aged between 35 and 40 years at the time of his death, while the other set of remains belonged to a female aged over 50 years old. Although the authors were able to extract and sequence ancient DNA from both individuals, they were only able to sequence the entire genome from the male’s remains due to gaps in the sequences obtained from the female’s remains.

Comparisons of the male individual’s DNA with DNA obtained from 1,030 other ancient and 471 modern western Eurasian individuals suggested that his DNA shared the most similarities with modern central Italians and other individuals who lived in Italy during the Roman Imperial age. However, analyses of the male individual’s mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA also identified groups of genes that are commonly found in those from the island of Sardinia, but not among other individuals who lived in Italy during the Roman Imperial age. This suggests that there may have been high levels of genetic diversity across the Italian Peninsula during this time.

Additional analyses of the male individual’s skeleton and DNA identified lesions in one of the vertebrae and DNA sequences that are commonly found in Mycobacterium, the group of bacteria that the tuberculosis-causing bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis belongs to. This suggests that the individual may have been affected by tuberculosis prior to his death.

The authors speculate that it may have been possible to successfully recover ancient DNA from the male individual’s remains as pyroclastic materials released during the eruption may have provided protection from DNA-degrading environmental factors, such as atmospheric oxygen. The findings demonstrate the possibility to retrieve ancient DNA from Pompeiian human remains and provide further insight into the genetic history and lives of this population, they add.

: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10899

Archaeologists expand excavations at Leicester Cathedral site

The team behind the discovery of Richard III have resumed major archaeological excavations at Leicester Cathedral, close to where the King was found

Business Announcement

 

IMAGE: VIEW OF THE RICHARD III STATUE IMMEDIATELY OUTSIDE LEICESTER CATHEDRAL, CLOSE TO BOTH THESE LATEST ULAS WORKS AND THE GREYFRIARS SITE WHERE THE KING'S REMAINS WERE FOUND IN 2012. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

The team behind the discovery of Richard III have resumed major archaeological excavations at Leicester Cathedral, close to where the King was found.

Archaeologists and other experts from University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) are leading excavations on the site of the Old Song School, at the eastern end of Leicester Cathedral, which could reveal aspects of Leicester life from the past 1,000 years.

The area within the Cathedral Gardens, previously part of St Martins’ churchyard, is being transformed into a new heritage and learning space as part of the Leicester Cathedral Revealed project, enabled by a £4.5 million grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

In advance of the regeneration, ULAS experts and colleagues from the University’s School of Archaeology and Ancient History hope to examine a cross section of the City’s history and learn more about the early foundation of the Cathedral – formerly a Parish Church – on the site.

These archaeological excavations, up to two metres below ground level, will allow experts to track the history of this part of Leicester from the Victorian period through Medieval, Saxon, Roman and perhaps even to early Iron Age settlement.

Mathew Morris is a Project Officer at ULAS and leads the excavations. He was also part of the team which unearthed the remains of Richard III in 2012, a stone’s throw from the Cathedral site. He said:

“This is in an area of Leicester which we rarely get to excavate, and it’s going to be the first time which we have excavated a continuous cemetery sequence dating from the late Saxon period to the relatively recent past, giving us a fantastic opportunity to investigate the story of Leicester through the lives of the people who lived and were buried here.

“The excavation is also going to give us the chance to explore the origins of the Cathedral site, including the foundation of the original church and aspects of the Roman town which predated it.”

Preliminary investigations took place in late 2021, with the ULAS team carefully uncovering more than 120 burials in the top-most layers on the site. The area was once used as the churchyard for burials of people from all walks of life living in the surrounding parish.

It is believed that there could be hundreds more burials on the site, which experts will need to painstakingly excavate by hand. Samples will then be tested by University of Leicester experts, which will reveal insights into the life of those who lived, worked and died in the City.

Dr Sarah Inskip is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Leicester and will lead this work to study these remains, as part of a wider project to study the history of tobacco use from the 15th to 18th Centuries. She said:

“The individuals offer an unpresented glimpse into life in Leicester through the Medieval and Post-Medieval periods. The ability to assess individuals from one location over such a long time period will allow us to see how the lives of Leicester people changed with major social upheaval and transitions, such as epidemic disease, the arrival of new global commodities such as tobacco, and industrialisation.”

Earlier burials will also be studied by experts from York Osteoarchaeology.

Dean of Leicester, the Very Revd David Monteith, added:

“Leicester Cathedral is pleased to be working with ULAS once again on the archaeological excavation work for our Leicester Cathedral Revealed project that will renew the Cathedral so that it can be its very best as a place of worship, heritage, pilgrimage, hospitality, learning, sanctuary and celebration.

“The archaeological excavations are a key element of the repair and restoration works to the existing Cathedral building and the construction of a new visitor and learning centre, The Chapter House - a striking extension to the Cathedral on the footprint of the Old Song School. The Chapter House will provide an exhibition gallery with immersive interpretation, a flexible learning space for school children and community groups, facilities for volunteers and WCs.”

Building work on the Leicester Cathedral Revealed project is led by main contractor Messenger Construction Ltd. ULAS excavations are expected to last for several months, with post-excavation work taking place into 2023.

Once the project is completed, the studied individuals will be reinterred by Leicester Cathedral.

John Thomas, Deputy Director of ULAS, added:

“The opportunity to examine a cross section of past Leicester residents is tremendously exciting and the timing of this excavation with the 10-year anniversary of the discovery of Richard couldn’t be more fitting.

“Collaborative work at the University and beyond revealed much about the life of Richard III and we hope to use comparable techniques to gain similar insights into those less historically visible.”

Later in 2022, the University of Leicester will mark the 10 years since the discovery of the remains of Richard III in a Leicester car park.

Working with the Richard III Society and other partners, ULAS archaeologists unearthed the King’s mortal remains in a trench in 2012. Further study, including genetic testing of the skeleton’s DNA against a known modern-day relative, revealed the remains belonged to the last Plantagenet King.

Richard’s remains were later reinterred in a specially-created tomb at Leicester Cathedral in 2015, in the presence of Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and members of the Royal Family.

First Australians ate giant eggs of huge flightless birds

 Proteins extracted from fragments of prehistoric eggshell found in the Australian sands confirm that the continent’s earliest humans consumed the eggs of a two-metre tall bird that disappeared into extinction over 47,000 years ago. 

Burn marks discovered on scraps of ancient shell several years ago suggested the first Australians cooked and ate large eggs from a long-extinct bird – leading to fierce debate over the species that laid them. 

Now, an international team led by scientists from the universities of Cambridge and Turin have placed the animal on the evolutionary tree by comparing the protein sequences from powdered egg fossils to those encoded in the genomes of living avian species.  

“Time, temperature and the chemistry of a fossil all dictate how much information we can glean,” said senior co-author Prof Matthew Collins from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology. 

“Eggshells are made of mineral crystals that can tightly trap some proteins, preserving this biological data in the harshest of environments – potentially for millions of years.”     

According to findings published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the ancient eggs came from Genyornis: a huge flightless “mihirung” – or ‘Thunder Bird’ – with tiny wings and massive legs that roamed prehistoric Australia, possibly in flocks.  

Fossil records show that Genyornis stood over two metres tall, weighed between 220-240 kilograms, and laid melon-sized eggs of around 1.5 kg. It was among the Australian “mega-fauna” to vanish a few thousand years after humans arrived, suggesting people played a role in its extinction.  

The earliest “robust” date for the arrival of humans to Australia is some 65,000 years ago. Burnt eggshells from the previously unconfirmed species all date to around 50 to 55 thousand years ago – not long before Genyornis is thought to have gone extinct – by which time humans had spread across most of the continent.  

“There is no evidence of Genyornis butchery in the archaeological record. However, eggshell fragments with unique burn patterns consistent with human activity have been found at different places across the continent,” said senior co-author Prof Gifford Miller from the University of Colorado.

“This implies that the first humans did not necessarily hunt these enormous birds, but did routinely raid nests and steal their giant eggs for food,” he said. “Overexploitation of the eggs by humans may well have contributed to Genyornis extinction.”

While Genyornis was always a contender for the mystery egg-layer, some scientists argued that – due to shell shape and thickness – a more likely candidate was the Progura or ‘giant malleefowl’: another extinct bird, much smaller, weighing around 5-7 kg and akin to a large turkey. 

The initial ambition was to put the debate to bed by pulling ancient DNA from pieces of shell, but genetic material had not sufficiently survived the hot Australian climate.

Miller turned to researchers at Cambridge and Turin to explore a relatively new technique for extracting a different type of “biomolecule”: protein.

While not as rich in hereditary data, the scientists were able to compare the sequences in ancient proteins to those of living species using a vast new database of biological material: the Bird 10,000 Genomes (B10K) project.    

“The Progura was related to today’s megapodes, a group of birds in the galliform lineage, which also contains ground-feeders such as chickens and turkeys,” said study first author Prof Beatrice Demarchi from the University of Turin.

“We found that the bird responsible for the mystery eggs emerged prior to the galliform lineage, enabling us to rule out the Progura hypothesis. This supports the implication that the eggs eaten by early Australians were laid by Genyornis.”

The 50,000-year-old eggshell tested for the study came from the archaeological site of Wood Point in South Australia, but Prof Miller has previously shown that similar burnt shells can be found at hundreds of sites on the far western Ningaloo coast. 

The researchers point out that the Genyornis egg exploitation behaviour of the first Australians likely mirrors that of early humans with ostrich eggs, the shells of which have been unearthed at archaeological sites across Africa dating back at least 100,000 years. 

Prof Collins added: “While ostriches and humans have co-existed throughout prehistory, the levels of exploitation of Genyornis eggs by early Australians may have ultimately proved more than the reproductive strategies of these extraordinary birds could bear.”   

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2109326119 

Archaeologists reveal pre-Hispanic cities in Bolivia

 More than 20 years ago, Dr. Heiko Prümers from the German Archaeological Institute and Prof. Dr. Carla Jaimes Betancourt from the University of Bonn, at that time a student in La Paz, began archaeological excavations on two "mounds" near the village of Casarabe in Bolivia. The Mojos Plains is a southwestern fringe of the Amazon region. Even though the savannah plain, which flooded several months a year during rainy season, does not encourage permanent settlement, there are still many visible traces of the time before Spanish colonization at the beginning of the 16th century. Next to the "mounds," these traces include mainly causeways and canals that often lead for kilometers in a dead straight line across the savannahs.

"This indicated a relatively dense settlement in pre-Hispanic times. Our goal was to conduct basic research and trace the settlements and life there," says Heiko Prümers. In earlier studies, the researchers already found that the Casarabe culture -- named after the nearby village -- dates to the period between 500 and 1400 AD and, according to current knowledge, extended over a region of around 16,000 square kilometers. The "mounds" turned out to be eroded pyramid stumps and platform buildings.

Initial conventional surveys revealed a terraced core area, a ditch-wall enclosing the site, and canals. In addition, it became apparent that some of these pre-Hispanic settlements were enormous in size. "However, the dense vegetation under which these settlements were located prevented us from seeing the structural details of the monumental mounds and their surroundings," says Carla Jaimes Betancourt from the Department for the Anthropology of the Americas at the University of Bonn.

LIDAR technology used in the Amazon for the first time

To find out more, the researchers used the airborne laser technology LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) for the first time in the Amazon region. This involves surveying the terrain with a laser scanner attached to a helicopter, small aircraft or drone that transmits around 1.5 million laser pulses per second. In a subsequent evaluation step, the vegetation is digitally removed creating a digital model of the earth's surface, which can also be displayed as a 3D image. "The first results were excellent and showed how effective the technology was even in dense rainforest. From that moment on, the desire arose to map the large settlements of the Casarabe culture using LIDAR technology," says study leader Dr. Heiko Prümers.

For the current study, in 2019 the team together with Prof. Dr. José Iriarte and Mark Robinson from the University of Exeter, mapped a total of 200 square kilometers of the Casarabe cultural area. The evaluation done by the company ArcTron3 held a surprise. What came to light were two remarkably large sites of 147 hectares and 315 hectares in a dense four-tiered settlement system. "With a north-south extension of 1.5 kilometers and an east-west extension of about one kilometer, the largest site found so far is as large as Bonn was in the 17th century," says co-author Prof. Dr. Carla Jaimes Betancourt.

It is not yet possible to estimate how many people lived there. "However, the layout of the settlement itself tells us that planners and many active hands were at work here," says Heiko Prümers. Modifications made to the settlement, for example the expansion of the rampart-ditch system, also speak to a reasonable increase in population. "For the first time, we can refer to pre-Hispanic urbanism in the Amazon and show the map of the Cotoca site, the largest settlement of the Casarabe culture known to us so far," Prümers emphasizes. In other parts of the world similar agrarian cities with low population densities had already been found.

LIDAR shows anthropogenically altered landscape

LIDAR mapping reveals the architecture of the settlement's large squares. Stepped platforms topped by U-shaped structures, rectangular platform mounds, and conical pyramids (up to 22 meters high). Causeway-like paths and canals connect the individual settlements and indicate a tight social fabric. At least one other settlement can be found within five kilometers of each of the settlements known today. "So the entire region was densely settled, a pattern that overturns all previous ideas," says Carla James Betancourt, who is a member of the Transdisciplinary Research Area "Present Pasts" at the University of Bonn.

The researchers emphasize that for all the euphoria about the site mappings and the possibilities they offer for reinterpreting the settlements in their geographic setting, the real archaeological work is just beginning. The goal for the future, they say, is to understand how these large regional centers functioned.

"Time is running out because the spread of mechanical agriculture is destroying a pre-Columbian structure every month in the Llanos de Mojos region, including mounds, canals, and causeways," says Betancourt. With this in mind, Betancourt says, Lidar is not only a tool for documenting archaeological sites, but also for planning and preserving the impressive cultural heritage of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon.