Video: New LIDAR discoveries in Amazonia and southern Mexico

Archaeologists continue to expand the vast territories of several previously unknown civilizations in the heart of South America. Popular British archaeologist, Stephan Milo, provides viewers an overview of these discoveries in a conversational style, which is easy to understand.

In particular, Milo is fascinated by the discovery of many U-shaped earthen mounds like this one in southern Florida and on the Georgia Coast, plus multiple, massive platform mounds, like those along the Savannah River in Georgia at multiple city sites in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and northwestern Peru. He does not know about the Amazonian-North American connection, but we do!

It is hard to believe, but it has now been almost two decades, since I had one of the most fascinating experiences in my life . . . getting almost daily updates via a satellite dish in the Amazon Rain Forest from the first large British expedition to explore the lost civilizations of the Upper Amazon Rain Forest. They were puzzled because they were discovering earthen structures that seemed to belong to the Muskogean peoples of the Southeastern United States or the Hopewell Culture in the Ohio River Basin.

In 2004, the Architecture Channel in the UK broadcast a special program on the pioneering work, being done by an architect in New Mexico and myself. It is commonplace now, but we were using Architectural CADD and the then new Virtual Reality softwares to produce extremely accurate 3D imagery of archaeological sites. Both of us were using CADD and astronomical charts to prove that Native American buildings were intentionally oriented to the sun, moon or stars . . . as discussed in the video below.

Heretofore, archaeologist relied on artists to create three dimensional paintings or sketches of sites. They were always dimensionally and structurally inaccurate. All of the artist renderings of Southeastern town sites, including Etowah Mounds, that you see on Wikipedia are inaccurate to varying degrees. Artists lack the education in mathematics and structural engineering that is necessary for accurate perspectives and structural details.

One of the archaeologists on site in eastern Peru, saw this rendering above on the Architecture Channel website then tracked me down. She told me that they were also finding the footprints of wooden structures, which seemed identical to the famous “Creek Squares,” plus earthen pyramids, which strongly resembled those in Georgia and Alabama.

Of course, we now know that Eastern Creeks (probably many Muskogee Creeks, too) carry significant South American DNA. Many of the tribes in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, eastern Tennessee and eastern Alabama were from South America or the Caribbean Basin. All of the commercial maize (American corn) varieties in North America, except those in arid regions, originated in South America. Now, it is standard procedure, everywhere in the world, except in the United States, where it was invented, to use architects to prepare computer models of ancient structures and cities.

Enjoy the video!