New study reveals the revolutionary farming system built by lost Amazon civilisation

An international team of researchers has recently discovered that an ancient civilisation in the Amazon developed a sophisticated agricultural engineering system that allowed them to successfully produce maize crops throughout the year.

The findings published in the journal Nature reveal that the Casarabe people of Bolivia’s Llanos de Moxos took this innovative approach which enabled them to cultivate the grain all year round, challenging earlier theories that dismissed intensive monoculture agriculture in this region.

The research was conducted by experts – including Dr Marco Raczka, Assistant Professor in Palaeoecology in the University of Nottingham’s School of Geography – with colleagues from the Institute of Environment Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB) and Prehistory Department at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain); the Universities of Exeter, Oxford, Reading and Southampton; and the University of São Paulo (Brazil) and Bolivian institutions.

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