Any “Lost Cities” there? (Like Indiana Jones might find)?
Years ago, I read of a very obscure Brailian archaeologist, who claims to have found evidence of an advanced civilization, living in the amazon region.
Or was Brazil populated by stone-age, low level civilizations, with no remains at all?
Hard to believe. Even now the deep jungle of the Amazon is a nasty deadly place.
Only in popular mythology. In any case most of the diseases found there today were introduced from the Old World post-Columbus.
When Francisco de Orellana made the first descent of the river in 1541-1542, he described much of its banks as being very heavily populated.
Later expeditions found the river largely depopulated. But it is estimated that in many places up to 90% of the indigenous population was killed off by introduced diseases, sometimes before Europeans themselves actually arrived through spread from other areas.
The actual pre-Columbian population of the banks of the Amazon basin is a very hotly debated topic in archeology. However, there are some areas where very dense layers of pottery and other remains have been found.
See this article on terra preta for more on the controversy.
I saw that programme aswell and Ithink that the implication was that the Amazon Jungle only grew over that area after the unknown civilisation had died out.
To be honest the theory didn’t sound as farfetched as you might think