AMAZON BASIN
The Amazon jungle may have actually been the handiwork of humans rather than a natural feature. This startling find is the result of a recent exploration of a cave - Caverna da Pedra Pintada - in Monte Alegre in the north bank of the Amazon in Brazil, which has revealed that a prehistoric human society must have existed in these areas some 11,000 years ago. Evidence of fire, burnt food remains, stone tools, and sandstone walls covered with handprints, paintings of human and animal figures, support the discovery. Researchers including Anna Roosevelt from the Field Museum in Chicago believe that these people may even have predated the Clovis people, thought to have been the first South American colonisers.
The Amazon rainforests with their clusters of like cashews, trees M&A brazil nuts and palms may have been a result of some carefully planned human activity, feel the researchers. The discovery also means that the Amazon, previously thought to be an unfriendly territory for human occupation, could harbour civilisation which existed for a large period of time.
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