Complexity Digest 2008.36 - 07.01

4-Sept-2008

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Archaeology: The Western Amazon's "Garden Cities", Science Bookmark and Share

Excerpts: (...) finding a set of urban settlements startlingly similar to Howard's garden cities--built in the forests of the south-central Amazon as early as 1250 C.E.

The paper identifies dozens of densely packed "towns, villages, and hamlets" covering perhaps 30,000 square kilometers--an area the size of Belgium--in the headwaters of the Xingu River. The settlements, built by indigenous peoples, were tied together by "well-planned road networks" and embedded in a matrix of agricultural land.