'Mind Blowing' Ancient Settlements Uncovered in the Amazon - Nature

Discoveries huge and small are "challenging archaeological dogma," as Freda Kreier notes in this first case. Using lidar imaging in 2019—"a monumental task that would have taken 400 years to survey by conventional means" in the words of a team member—an international effort has identified formerly densely populated urban centers with terraces, conical earthen pyramids, and causeways. These Bolivian finds alter "the general perspective people have of Amazonian archaeology," claims another team member about the period from 500 to 1400 CE. That find was from an intentional search; Thomson Reuters reports that Construction Unearths Ancient Mayan Ruins on Yucatan Peninsula. The remains of a 600-900 CE Mayan city, with a surprising architectural style for the area near Merida, feature palaces, pyramids, and plazas. The site will be preserved, though the intended industrial park will still be built. Ruth Schuster informs that "A new study debunks pretty much all previous work" on The True History of the Chicken's Late Arrival in the West. Earlier dates for the bird's spread in the Old World are literally "for the birds," researchers suggest. And contrary to its food properties (forget any medicinal value to chicken soup, says Schuster), the chicken's "fowl temper" probably caused its early celebrity. (WM)

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from THE ANOMALIST https://go.nature.com/3NTj3Z2