The Lost Aquiry Civilization: LiDAR Reveals Millions Once Lived in Southwestern Amazonia

Extrapolating from this representative sample to the broader terrain, the researchers estimate that between 20,000 and 30,000 earthworks may exist across the southwestern Amazon region . One report cites an upper possible figure of 30,000 . The territory occupied by the Aquiry civilization is estimated at 183,000 square kilometers — roughly the size of the modern-day country of Syria .

A Civilization of Millions

The study estimates that the Aquiry civilization reached a peak population of up to 3 million people around 200 CE . The civilization flourished from roughly 600 BCE to 850 CE . Its population was supported across a network of settlements linked by roads and earthworks, representing what researchers describe as a form of low-density urbanism . As one researcher noted, the finding "completely transformed my understanding" of the region's prehistory .

How the Aquiry Fed a Population of Millions

The Aquiry practiced fire-managed agriculture: they burned bamboo-dominated forest to clear land for fields, primarily cultivating maize (corn) . Microbotanical evidence from related southwestern Amazon sites confirms maize as a staple, grown through sophisticated landscape engineering that included drainage canals .

Other cultivated plants likely included manioc (cassava), sweet potato, squash, and peach palm — a pattern of polyculture agroforestry well-documented across southern Amazonia . The earthworks themselves — geometric ditches, causeways, and platforms — served both ceremonial and practical functions, including water management, territorial demarcation, and possibly defensive purposes .

Refuting the Myth of an Untouched Amazon

The findings decisively refute the long-held myth of the Amazon as a "pristine" or "untouched" wilderness that was only sparsely occupied before European contact . The data reveal that millions of people lived in and actively shaped the southwestern Amazon for nearly 1,500 years, building tens of thousands of structures and managing forests through fire and cultivation . The Aquiry did not merely adapt to the forest; they engineered the landscape at a massive scale, leaving a durable anthropogenic signature that persists in the modern canopy .

The study also has contemporary relevance: recognizing the scale of pre-Columbian land use supports Indigenous land claims and challenges narratives that portray the Amazon as a wilderness empty of human history prior to colonialism .