What Lies Hidden Beneath the Amazon Rainforest?

Very recommendable!

(236) What Lies Hidden Beneath the Amazon Rainforest? | NOVA | PBS - YouTube

Hidden Civilisation Discovered Beneath Amazon's Wilderness

Very recommendable! Amazing stuff!

I already blogged here about this discovery.

(1836) Hidden Civilisation Discovered Beneath Amazon's Wilderness | WION - YouTube

An ancient civilization of 1-3 millions once flourished in the Amazonia

Amazing stuff!

"The first hint that sprawling ancient populations once occupied the Amazon rainforest in Brazil was found through the most mundane of happenstances. More than 20 years ago, geographer Alceu Ranzi, now at the University of Acre, sat on the right side of a plane flying over the ocean of green. Looking down, he saw a perfect circle inscribed on the ground, an unnatural shape produced only, he felt certain, by humans. He was right.

Decades of subsequent research ... have slowly revealed remnants of peoples that occupied even the forest’s most remote areas. ... what archaeologists call earthworks—a type of architecture carved into the landscape. Now, using a laser-based form of radar known as lidar, researchers suggest ancient Amazonians were widespread in territories previously considered uninhabited. ...

The area surveyed by the researchers cuts through Acre and Amazonas, two northern Brazilian states that border Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. Although scientists already knew there were earthworks in the region, the new study delineated the western and northern borders of the geoglyph-building society, which researchers had previously named Aquiry. Far away from any major rivers, which historically sustained thriving populations, the scientists did not expect the Aquiry to reach such high numbers. ...

The team identified most of the earthworks in the new study as geoglyphs, ditches made in the ground that form geometric shapes including squares and circles, as well as more complex shapes such as pentagrams and octagons. Some are even more sophisticated, combining, for example, circles inside a perfect square. ..."

From the abstract:

"Numerous geometric earthworks have been found in southwestern Amazonia, evidence of a monument-building precolonial civilization. This knowledge has contributed to the discussion about the deep history and the precolonial urbanism of Amazonia, its sociocultural contexts and its environmental legacy.

Estimates of the geographical extent and population size of the forest civilization have remained weak, because the detection of earthworks has been almost exclusively limited to deforested areas where vegetation does not completely hide the structures.

Here we used canopy-penetrating LiDAR data over 4,430 km of flight to define the geographical distribution and quantity of earthworks in this region better. On the basis of both existing data and our LiDAR documentation, we show that this cultural area alone contains as many earthworks as previously estimated for the whole of Amazonia.

We also propose that the total human population of the area in 100–300 ad was 1.25–3 million people.

If similar results are found elsewhere in Amazonia, the total precolonial population density and its effect on the current Amazonian soil and forest structure, biodiversity and even some modelling of the global climate should be re-evaluated."

An ancient civilization of millions once flourished in the Amazon

Odd shapes hidden in dense Amazon rainforest reveal sprawling ancient civilization "Newly found earthworks suggest about 3 million people might have lived in just about 3% of the forest’s entire area"

Over 20,000 precolonial earthworks in the Southwest Amazonia (open access)

An aerial shot shows a square-shaped geoglyph in Acre, a state at Brazil’s northern border

Lidar uses infrared light to uncover the shapes hidden underneath dense tree canopies.

Fig. 2: Diverse earthwork types with their topographical contexts.

Fig. 1: Map of the study area.

Amazon launches 30-minute delivery across the US

Good news! But Amazon is only catching up with the already very fast delivery widely available in China for almost everything. I recently blogged here and here about it.

"Amazon deliveries keep getting faster. On Tuesday, the online retailer announced the launch of its 30-minute delivery option, dubbed “Amazon Now,” in dozens of U.S. cities.

This ultra-fast delivery option will allow customers to shop across “thousands” of items, Amazon says, including fresh groceries, household essentials, and other locally relevant items. ..."

Amazon launches 30-minute delivery across the US | TechCrunch

AWS extends Ichilov AI medical collaboration for hospital to become cloud based

Good news!

"The new agreement is a continuation of a collaboration between the parties, in which Ichilov transferred all of its computer systems to the cloud, becoming one of the world’s first hospitals to do so."

AWS extends Ichilov AI medical collaboration - Globes "The new agreement is a continuation of a collaboration between the parties, in which Ichilov transferred all of its computer systems to the cloud, becoming one of the world’s first hospitals to do so."

Amazon releases an impressive new AI chip and teases a Nvidia-friendly roadmap

Good news! Competition is good, more competition is better!

"Amazon Web Services, which has been building its own AI training chips for years now, just introduced a new version known as Trainium3 that comes with some impressive specs. ...

Trainium3 UltraServer, a system powered by the company’s state-of-the art, 3 nanometer Trainium3 chip, as well as its homegrown networking tech. As you might expect, the third-generation chip and system offer big bumps in performance for AI training and inference over the second-generation, according to AWS.

AWS says the systems are more than four times faster, with four times more memory, not just for training, but for delivering AI apps at peak demand. Additionally, thousands of UltraServers can be linked together to provide an app with up to 1 million Trainium3 chips — 10 times the previous generation. Each UltraServer can host 144 chips, according to the company. ..."

"Key takeaways

• Trainium3 UltraServers deliver high performance for AI workloads with up to 4.4x more compute performance, 4x greater energy efficiency, and almost 4x more memory bandwidth than Trainium2 UltraServers—enabling faster AI development with lower operational costs.
• Trn3 UltraServers scale up to 144 Trainium3 chips, delivering up to 362 FP8 PFLOPs with 4x lower latency to train larger models faster and serve inference at scale.
• Customers including Anthropic, Karakuri, Metagenomi, NetoAI, Ricoh, and Splash Music are reducing training and inference costs by up to 50% with Trainium, while Decart is achieving 4x faster inference for real-time generative video at half the cost of GPUs, and Amazon Bedrock is already serving production workloads on Trainium3.

..."

Amazon releases an impressive new AI chip and teases a Nvidia-friendly roadmap   | TechCrunch

Trainium3 UltraServers now available: Enabling customers to train and deploy AI models faster at lower cost (original news release)

Chart of the day

COP30 starts tomorrow! Let's see how much hot air they produce again!

There are also serious efforts going on to reforest the Amazon!

Source

Illegal Gold Mining, Mercury in the Amazon and children with neurological disorders

There is one well known remedy to illegal mining of precious metals! Make it legal and thereby more safe and protect the environment!

According to Google: "Roughly half of the Amazon is covered by some form of management and protection, including protected areas and indigenous territories."

Notice that the report does not say whether indigenous people themselves are involved in some of the illegal gold mining. If yes, maybe they should be educated or trained to do it safely. The noble savage myth and/or all indigenous people are victims propaganda?

"Brazilian researchers are finding mounting proof that mercury from illegal Amazon gold mining is linked to neurological disorders and disabilities among Indigenous children. 

 

Background: As illegal mining has proliferated in the region, rivers—key to the livelihoods of Indigenous people—have become contaminated with mercury, as have the fish eaten as staple food.  

 

Emerging evidence: In recent years, health officials have reported dozens of patients in the region—mostly children—with neurological disorders.  

While scientists have long suspected mercury as the culprit, a groundbreaking study tracking 176 pregnant women and their babies aims to find more definitive answers. 

Already, preliminary findings show that the mothers have mercury levels 5X higher than considered safe."

Global Health NOW: Gold Mining, Mercury, and the Amazon’s Mothers; and Dispatches from Bogotà: ICFP 2025

Scientists Try to Prove Link Between Amazon Gold Mining and Disabilities in Babies

AI improves drug safety in remote areas of the Brazilian Amazon by preventing prescription errors etc.

Good news! The many positive ways ML & AI will change our lives all over the world!

Tech giant Amazon is delivering safer health care deep in the Amazon! No pun intended! 😊

"Artificial intelligence is proving to be a boon to understaffed medical clinics in the Brazilian Amazon, where a new tool is helping pharmacists catch dangerous prescription errors in real time. One pharmacist told Rest of World the AI has “quadrupled his capacity to clear prescriptions” and “caught more than 50 errors” since launching just a few months ago."

"... Developed by Brazilian nonprofit NoHarm and backed by tech giants including Google and Amazon, the AI assistant helps health-care workers catch errors. ...

The Amazonian municipality of Caracaraí has 22,000 inhabitants and an overworked pharmacist named Samuel Andrade. ..."

Weekly Progress Roundup - by Malcolm Cochran - Doomslayer

AI Is Making Health Care Safer in the Remote Amazon

AI is making health care safer in the remote Amazon "At overburdened clinics, pharmacists use AI to catch dangerous errors. It’s frontier tech meets frontier medicine — with global implications."

Caracaraí in Brazil

Pharmacist and pharmacy

Inside the pharmacy?

Nature: 27 New Species Showcase Amazon Rainforest's Rich Biodiversity in Peru

Amazing stuff!

Amazon vs. Temu: Prime Day heats up e-commerce price war

Competition is good, more competition is better!

"Amazon.com is offering deep discounts on electronics, household items and more for its Prime Day sales event amid growing competition with Chinese rival Temu, as inflation sends consumers hunting for bargains.

From 40% off Samsung TVs to 30% off the Apple Watch, Amazon is dropping prices on a wide range of products over the two-day sale through Wednesday. Some Amazon-branded products are selling at a 70% markdown."

Amazon vs. Temu: Prime Day heats up e-commerce price war - Nikkei Asia U.S. giant sets steep discounts with eye on Chinese competition

Promoting Endangered Languages with AI - IBM Research

Food for though!

To ponder:

1. Would the world not be a better place and more peaceful if we did not speak so many different languages? 
2. Or will machine translation really make us all understand each other better all the time at any time? We'll find out!
3. Will we be able to preserve some of the unwritten wisdom of minority people?

"Nearly half of the world’s 7,000 languages are expected to go extinct by 2100. Now, large language models are being trained to document threatened languages and help encourage their use in everyday life." (Source)

"Today, Nheengatu, which translates to "good language" in English, is down to about 20,000 speakers and is on UNESCO’s list of “severely endangered” languages, meaning it’s no longer being passed down to most children. And it’s not the only language with a diminishing number of speakers. Nearly half of the world’s 7,000 languages are expected to go extinct by 2100. To try and stave off their decline, the United Nations has declared 2022-2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. ...

Working with students at Brazil’s University of Campinas, IBM researchers recently built a prototype for an AI-powered writing assistant in Nheengatu. It’s a language that many students grew up hearing their parents and grandparents speak, but that most never learned to read or write. ..."

Promoting Endangered Languages with AI - IBM Research From about 1600 to 1800, Nheengatu was the lingua franca of the Amazon, one of 800 Indigenous languages spoken during the Portuguese colonization of Brazil. Linguistically, Nheengatu evolved as a way for Indigenous communities to communicate with the Portuguese — and each other.

Soon you’ll be able to buy a car on Amazon, but only a Hyundai

The car dealership racket in America is one of the worst for many decades! This racket needs to go!

Apparently, it took Hyundai several years to make this happen! And it is still tied to a local car dealership! Grrrr!!!!

"... Since 2018, Hyundai has operated an “electronic showroom” on Amazon, which lets shoppers browse cars – and almost, but not quite, buy them. ...

On Nov. 16, 2023, at the Los Angeles Auto Show, Amazon and Hyundai made a big announcement: Starting sometime in 2024, a new pilot program would let shoppers not only browse Hyundai cars on Amazon.com but pay for them, too. ...

But as of this date – Jan. 26, 2024 – you can’t actually check out with a car in your cart. Instead, once you’ve chosen the car you want, Amazon will direct you to a local dealer so you can choose financing/leasing and pay for the car at the dealership. ..."

In the market for a car? Soon you’ll be able to buy a Hyundai on Amazon − and only a Hyundai

Archaeologists uncover cluster of lost cities and roads in Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest built 2,500 years ago

Amazing stuff! This was one of the big archaeological stories of recent times!

Did you know that the Amazon rainforest extends all the way to Ecuador? I did not or had forgotten about it.

"Archaeologists have uncovered a cluster of lost cities in the Amazon rainforest that was home to at least 10,000 farmers around ..."

"Archaeologists once believed the ancient Amazon rainforest was an inhospitable place, sparsely populated by bands of hunter-gatherers. But the remains of enormous earthworks, pyramids, and roads from Bolivia to Brazil discovered over the past 2 decades have proved conclusively that the Amazon was home to large, complex societies long before European colonizers arrived. Now, there’s evidence that another human society—the oldest yet—left its mark on the region: A dense network of interconnected cities, now hidden beneath the forest in Ecuador’s Upano Valley, has been revealed by the laser mapping technology called lidar. The settlements, described today in Science, are at least 2500 years old, more than 1000 years older than any other known complex Amazonian society. ..."

From the editor's summary and abstract:

"Editor’s summary

When intact, the Amazonian forest is dense and difficult to penetrate, both on foot and with scanning technologies. Over the past several years, however, improved light detection and ranging scans have begun to penetrate the forest canopy, revealing previously unknown evidence of past Amazonian cultures. Rostain et al. describe evidence of such an agrarian Amazonian culture that began more than 2000 years ago. They describe more than 6000 earthen platforms distributed in a geometic pattern connected by roads and intertwined with agricultural landscapes and river drainages in the Upano Valley. Previous efforts have described mounds and large monuments in Amazonia, but the complexity and extent of this development far surpasses these previous sites. ...

Abstract

A dense system of pre-Hispanic urban centers has been found in the Upano Valley of Amazonian Ecuador, in the eastern foothills of the Andes. Fieldwork and light detection and ranging (LIDAR) analysis have revealed an anthropized landscape with clusters of monumental platforms, plazas, and streets following a specific pattern intertwined with extensive agricultural drainages and terraces as well as wide straight roads running over great distances. Archaeological excavations date the occupation from around 500 BCE to between 300 and 600 CE. The most notable landscape feature is the complex road system extending over tens of kilometers, connecting the different urban centers, thus creating a regional-scale network. Such extensive early development in the Upper Amazon is comparable to similar Maya urban systems recently highlighted in Mexico and Guatemala."

Archeologists uncover cluster of lost cities in Ecuadorian Amazon | AP News

Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago Neighborhoods, farms, and roads are 1000 years older than previous discoveries

Two thousand years of garden urbanism in the Upper Amazon (no public access)

Google maps of Upano Valley

Amazonia - It probably holds over 10,000 undiscovered earthworks from pre-Columbian indigenous people

Amazing stuff!

"During the pre-Columbian era, the Amazon was home to complex societies throughout its vast forested area. These ancient indigenous societies had a deep knowledge of earthmoving, which they used to create earthworks with social, ceremonial and defensive functions. The scale of that landscape transformation remains unknown -- and much about these civilizations is also unknown. ..."

From the editor's summary and the abstract:

"Editor’s summary

Indigenous societies have lived in the Amazon for at least 12,000 years. Finding evidence of these societies, however, has been greatly hampered by the density of the forest in Amazonia. Peripato et al. used LIDAR (light detection and ranging) surveys to identify more than 20 previously unidentified developments and then modeled the occurrence of others across the Amazon. The authors predict that between 10,000 and 24,000 ancient earthworks are waiting to be discovered. Sampling of some of the LIDAR transects revealed a consistent set of domesticated tree species associated with the developments, suggesting active forestry practices among these societies. ...

Abstract

Indigenous societies are known to have occupied the Amazon basin for more than 12,000 years, but the scale of their influence on Amazonian forests remains uncertain. We report the discovery, using LIDAR (light detection and ranging) information from across the basin, of 24 previously undetected pre-Columbian earthworks beneath the forest canopy. Modeled distribution and abundance of large-scale archaeological sites across Amazonia suggest that between 10,272 and 23,648 sites remain to be discovered and that most will be found in the southwest. We also identified 53 domesticated tree species significantly associated with earthwork occurrence probability, likely suggesting past management practices. Closed-canopy forests across Amazonia are likely to contain thousands of undiscovered archaeological sites around which pre-Columbian societies actively modified forests, a discovery that opens opportunities for better understanding the magnitude of ancient human influence on Amazonia and its current state."

The Amazon is not pristine. It probably holds over 10,000 undiscovered earthworks

More than 10,000 pre-Columbian earthworks are still hidden throughout Amazonia (no public access)

Geographical distribution of known and newly discovered pre-Columbian geometric earthworks in Amazonia.

Climate friendly Amazon

 This was in my email inbox today:

Global Warming hoax and Climate Change religion in a nutshell

Amazonian indigenous people participate in study to monitor mercury levels in fish they catch

Recommendable!

"... He's sending his photos and a spreadsheet he's filled out with all the details of his catch to a WhatsApp group called "Fishing Monitoring," with an emoji of a chubby blue fish next to the name. Another nine men monitoring fishing in their villages receive the message as do an interpreter, three technicians and a coordinator from the Kabu Institute, a nonprofit started in 2008 by the Mebêngôkre Kayapó ...
The Mebêngôkre Kayapó worry that mercury could be contaminating the fish they eat.  ...
They knew scientists had done studies to find out just that in other rivers and in other Indigenous territories. ...
So with funding from donations received through FUNBIO's Kayapó Fund, many from charities like Conservation International and the International Conservation Fund of Canada, they partnered with researchers and learned how to start a study of their own. ...
One of 305 Indigenous groups in Brazil, the Mebêngôkre Kayapó, who number some 9,400 people, live on the largest tract of Indigenous territory in Brazil, roughly the same size as South Korea or Iceland. ...
Through the nonprofit, the Indigenous group developed a partnership with technicians at Unyleya Socioambiental, a company that helps communities find solutions for socio-environmental problems. With the company's support, the Mebêngôkre Kayapó selected two monitors from each of the five villages sitting on the southern portion of the Pixaxá that would carry out the study, both in the rainy season and the dry season, to make sure that all species and types of fish — carnivores, omnivores and herbivores — were included. ..."

Amazonians use WhatsApp to track mercury levels in fish they catch : Goats and Soda : NPR

A Mebêngôkre Kayapó monitor records data about the fish caught in his village — part of an ongoing effort to assess the impact of illegal mining on local fish populations.

Lost beneath the leaves: Lasers reveal an ancient Amazonian civilisation

Amazing stuff!

From the abstract:

"Archaeological remains of agrarian-based, low-density urbananism have been reported to exist beneath the tropical forests of Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka and Central America. However, beyond some large interconnected settlements in southern Amazonia, there has been no such evidence for pre-Hispanic Amazonia. Here we present lidar data of sites belonging to the Casarabe culture (around AD 500 to AD 1400) in the Llanos de Mojos savannah–forest mosaic, southwest Amazonia, revealing the presence of two remarkably large sites (147 ha and 315 ha) in a dense four-tiered settlement system. The Casarabe culture area, as far as known today, spans approximately 4,500 km2, with one of the large settlement sites controlling an area of approximately 500 km2. The civic-ceremonial architecture of these large settlement sites includes stepped platforms, on top of which lie U-shaped structures, rectangular platform mounds and conical pyramids (which are up to 22 m tall). The large settlement sites are surrounded by ranked concentric polygonal banks and represent central nodes that are connected to lower-ranked sites by straight, raised causeways that stretch over several kilometres. Massive water-management infrastructure, composed of canals and reservoirs, complete the settlement system in an anthropogenically modified landscape. Our results indicate that the Casarabe-culture settlement pattern represents a type of tropical low-density urbanism that has not previously been described in Amazonia."

Lasers reveal ancient urban sprawl hidden in the Amazon A network of pre-Columbian canals and pyramids lurks within the thick forest

Lidar reveals pre-Hispanic low-density urbanism in the Bolivian Amazon (open access)

Introducing the $1 billion Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund

Wow, this is huge and very ambitious!

Introducing the $1 billion Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund Amazon is investing $1 billion to spur supply chain, fulfillment, and logistics innovation and further improve the customer and employee experience.

Credits: The Batch by Andrew Ng

Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos

Very recommendable!

However, PBS tried very desperately to blame Amazon for labor exploitation, poor safety record, ruining smaller businesses, third parties selling unsafe products etc.! Lot's of baloney!

PBS becomes really pathetic when they bring up Amazon Web Services, Cloud computing and Alexa. Amazon faces very intensive competition in these areas from e.g. Google, Microsoft and Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba.