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By Tim Newcomb Published: Aug 07, 2026 2:00 PM EDT Save Article Share Article Listen (5 min) 5 min Andriy Onufriyenko // Getty Images Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Why Trust Us? Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Aerial laser scanning of just 3 percent of a region researchers assign to an ancient civilization revealed evidence of a unexpectedly large precolonial population. Experts believe up to 3 million people lived from about 100 C.E. to 300 C.E. in this relatively small area of southwestern Amazonia. The new research could rewrite the history of the ancient Amazon’s population density. A large ancient population dubbed the Aquiry civilization by archaeologists may have lived in the southwestern Amazon jungle roughly 2,000 years ago, rewriting what historians thought they knew about the early inhabitants of the deep rainforest . According to a new study published in Nature , researchers say they’ve identified over 20,000 precolonial earthworks in a tiny section—just 3 percent—of the area historically occupied by the Aquiry. The earthworks offer “evidence of a monument-building precolonial civilization” on a much grander scale than ever seen before. “The scale and precision of these constructions is simply astonishing,” said the study’s lead author, University of Helsinki archaeologist Martti Pärssinen, according to New Scientist . Related Story Humans Called Rainforests Home 150,000 Years Ago Knowledge about these forest civilizations remains weak because most research comes only from deforested areas. To expand the data, the team used canopy-penetrating lidar to map the geographical distribution of ancient monumental forms, documenting 432 earthworks—396 of them never recorded before. Added to the 1,279 already known from satellite and aerial imagery, that brings the regional total to roughly 1,700, including 120 ditched geometric enclosures known as geoglyphs . Extrapolated out across the 70,000 square miles the researchers now assign to the Aquiry, the study predicts 24,000 to 30,000 earthworks in total, about two-thirds of them built by the Aquiry themselves. That number in just a relatively minuscule corner of the jungle means that previous estimates were far too low. The new results indicate that this one region has as many earthworks as had been projected for the entire Amazon , and about 20 times the number predicted for the whole southern rim. To get that many constructions required industrious people, which the researchers suggest necessitated a dense population of 1.25 million to three million people during the height of the Aquiry civilization between 100 C.E. and 300 C.E. “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 modeling of the global climate should be reevaluated,” the team wrote. Related Story Humans came to the Americas later than we thought The earthworks often feature ditches and embankments, and come shaped in circles and squares but can also include octagons and pentagrams. Likely popular as ceremonial or political bases, the sites average about seven acres, with the largest approaching 123 acres, containing ditches up to 16 feet deep and 30 to 43 feet wide. The research team believes they might have been built without metal tools and maybe even without the help of animals. The Aquiry civilization likely emerged around 600 B.C.E., with villages of roughly 300 inhabitants living in longhouses and cultivating crops like squash, maize, manioc, Brazil nuts, and peach palms. It appears they were also busy tending to molding the jungle landscape as the population boomed. The earthworks were largely abandoned between 850 to 950 C.E., a period that also witnessed the rapid collapse of other precolonial civilizations . The previous belief that the Amazon was an untouched wilderness gets dented with every new study, showing that people have long made the jungle their own. “That old idea,” study co-author Alceu Ranzi, a geographer at the University of Acre, said according to Science , “of a pristine Amazonia falls apart.” Tim Newcomb Journalist Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland. 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