Mysterious Human-Created Structures Are Older Than The Amazon Rainforest

Heiko Prumers

Shown here, a ring ditch next to Laguna Granja in the Amazon of northeastern Bolivia.

• Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience: A series of square, straight and ringlike ditches scattered throughout the Bolivian and Brazilian Amazon were there before the rainforest existed, a new study finds. These human-made structures remain a mystery: They may have been used for defense, drainage, or perhaps ceremonial or religious reasons. But the new research addresses another burning question: whether and how much prehistoric people altered the landscape in the Amazon before the arrival of Europeans...Continue reading...