Original subtitles

This is the Amazon rainforest. It's breathtaking.

So many people think of the Amazon as this vast, natural oasis.

Truly wild, unchanged forever...

...dotted with a few isolated tribes.

But it's a complete myth.

See, a monumental mystery is unfolding out here,

with new evidence of vast societies that thrived along these banks

and stretched right across the continent,

where now, there's nothing but dense rainforest.

I want to get to the bottom of this mystery

and find out for myself the real history of the Amazon.

I'm Ella al-Shamahi.

I'm an explorer and archaeologist in some of the world's

most dangerous and remote regions.

I'll be travelling through the Amazon's conflict zones...

GUNFIRE

LOUD BANG

...in search of a lost ancient world.

There's hand prints.

There's actual hand prints.

I'll be seeing how new technology is looking beneath the jungle,

uncovering vast, hidden settlements

and revealing the remains of entire civilisations

of millions of people.

It's going to raise a whole pile of questions.

Who were these people and when did they live here?

Where did they come from?

And perhaps most important of all, what on Earth happened to them?

I'm going on an incredible adventure to solve a massive mystery.

When most of us think about ancient civilisations in the Americas,

we think of the mighty mountain citadels of the Inca...

...and the great pyramids of the Maya.

But here in the Amazon,

there are no signs of ancient civilisation at all.

Just a vast, empty wilderness,

lightly populated by scattered indigenous groups.

But could we have got it all wrong?

An extraordinary account by a European explorer,

almost 500 years ago,

paints a dramatically different picture.

One of the first Europeans to ever travel along the Amazon

was a missionary called Gaspar de Carvajal.

He actually wrote about it in his diary in the 16th century

and he talks about "gleaming vast cities

"on the river banks."

And he describes inhabited areas that were 440 kilometres long.

It took them two clays and two nights to pass through it.

Back in 1542...

...Carvajal described a highly developed civilisation.

One to rival the famous cities of the Inca.

But successive generations of explorers

found pretty much what we see today.

Endless, impenetrable jungle.

So, the Spanish priest was forgotten.

His diary ridiculed.

But now, new archaeological evidence is suggesting

he may have been telling the truth after all.

My investigation will take me right across the Amazon,

the world's largest rainforest,

so huge, it spans eight countries.

I'm starting off in a region of western Brazil called Acre.

Here, huge areas of the forest have been cleared

and turned into farmland.

It's just tragic.

But it's also revealing something amazing.

Allowing archaeologists like Jose lriarte

to discover the Amazon's ancient secrets.

Hello, how are you? Hey, how's it going?

Watch out, it's super steep.

Deforestation has recently revealed these mind-blowing,

man-made geoglyphs-

Huge, mysterious geometric patterns...

...carved into the landscape.

This is one of the most distinct and mysterious geoglyphs

in the whole region.

We've all seen crop circles. Yeah.

But this is something like a pre-historic crop circle...

...in the Amazon.

This isn't supposed to exist and yet, it does.

It is a bit mad, isn't it?

Thought to date from as long as 2,000 years ago,

centuries before Europeans arrived in the Amazon,

their sheer scale means they surely could only have been built

by a highly organised society.

These are ritual, ceremonial structures.

If we go back in time and we think of the technology

that the geoglyph builders have,

it would take 100 people a month to take out the dirt

to build one of these structures.

So, we're talking about a society that was very complex.

To be able to plan, to build and to maintain these structures.

Discovering these structures is a game changer.

The people who built them weren't small groups of hunter-gatherers,

but part of a much more complex society than experts ever imagined.

Once completely hidden, they now seem to be everywhere.

So far, more than 500 structures have emerged

in this part of the Amazon alone...

...across an area almost the size of Scotland.

It's so completely unexpected.

I think so many of us have got the notion of the people

that lived in the Amazon and it wasn't societies like this.

This isn't a simple society.

These geoglyphs indicate a really complex society.

These discoveries are starting a revolution

in Amazonian archaeology.

OK, what...what are we looking at here?

So, this is our area of archaeological interest.

Today, cutting-edge laser technology called Lidar

is helping scientists to discover what's hidden beneath the tress,

without destroying the rainforest.

Look at all this area covered with trees.

But when we remove the canopy...

...kaboom.

The scan reveals structures that have never been seen before...

...including one that Jose is particularly intrigued by.

As you can see, we've found a new site

that was completely unknown to archaeology.

Oh, wow.

I mean, that's amazing.

What's revealed looks like a precise circle of mounds

with a straight road leading to it.

It's incredible.

That is completely hidden under the trees.

Jose believes this could be an ancient settlement.

But there's only one way to find out for sure.

Tomorrow, we're going to do an expedition to go through the forest

to find this site and see how it looks.

Oh, this is gonna be brilliant.

It's morning and a short, sweltering hike

takes us to the edge of the forest.

Ugh!

It's going to be dense, difficult terrain,

so we need a local guide.

Hey. Ella.

So, what's your assessment of the forest behind us?

Like, how brutal is it, really?

I feel like I'm about to go to my death in there.

I've done most of my archaeology in unstable and hostile territories,

like Yemen and Iraq,

but this jungle is a whole different challenge.

Here is the worst kind of forest.

This is the thing we need to watch for.

The palm spines. You see?

Once it enters your body, it won't come out.

Are you being serious? Yeah. It will come out in two, three months, so...

Please be very careful with these spines.

The going is painfully slow,

and it's taking much longer than Jose expected.

We still have a while to go

and, er, I'm a bit worried

because you can see how dense it is to get there.

I don't know if we are going to be able to see anything.

Oh, my God, the ants are everywhere.

We just did half of it.

We need to do the other half.

Come on, we can do this.

We can't stay in the forest after dark,

because at night, the jungle gets really dangerous.

Ow, shit.

Ai-ai-ai.

Then suddenly, Jose spots something.

Do you think this could be something, Ella?

I think, er, we may have found something.

Could it be the entrance to the ancient village?

This could be the causeway. W00!

In there.

We've been hacking through dense forest for most of the day...

...in search of what could be an ancient Amazonian settlement.

Wait, Neguinho. Wait.

Then suddenly, deep in the forest...

Look at that! Look at that.

This is much lower down.

If you take a look,

this looks like a ridge.

Steps down here and steps down to the other side.

Neguinho is 1.6 metres,

so we are talking that this man is minimum two metres and a half.

So this might be the entrance to the village?

This is likely to be the entrance of the village. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes!

As an archaeologist, these are the moments

that are really special, you know?

This is our newly-discovered site.

I wanna hug you. Sorry.

Jose's, like, doing this in the background.

This...this is just blowing my mind right now,

because this is real archaeological discovery.

No archaeologist has stepped here before. Not at all.

Revealed by laser scans,

Jose begins the first ever survey of the new site,

piecing together a picture of an ancient settlement.

And this ground-truthing gives strong evidence

that other newly-revealed structures

are also man-made.

It's archaeology like this that's retelling the history of the Amazon.

There were people who were living here hundreds of years ago

and it's so bloody awesome... Yeah.

...that we're standing at the beginning of the village.

But I am actually standing on an ant hill

and they are biting me really badly,

so I think we should move.

It's five o'clock. We need to get out. Vamonos!

We can now bring this village to life.

Over 500 years ago,

20 or more houses would have been built on raised platforms,

forming a circle more than 150 metres across.

There was a sunken road leading into a large central plaza...

...where a community of up to 200 people would have gathered.

And the lidar scans show this settlement wasn't alone.

The road leads to another village nearby,

the first of over 50

that formed a vast extended network, mostly hidden until now.

It's powerful evidence that ancient Amazonians

built permanent, organised societies.

And it's just the start of the revolution

that's changing our understanding of the Amazon.

Back in 1542,

the Spanish missionary Gaspar de Carvajal

described even more sophisticated societies...

...with huge cities and lords adorned with elaborate jewellery.

Now, I'm heading to Bolivia

in search of those gleaming cities.

0h!

My introduction to Bolivia's a bit bumpy.

I've already seen how ground-breaking lidar

can unlock the secrets of the Amazon.

I've come to find out how it actually works

and what more secrets it can reveal.

Hi!

Good morning.

Ella, nice to meet you guys. Mark.

How do you do, Ella? Hi, Mark.

Heiko. Heiko, nice to meet you. Hi.

British archaeologist Mark Robinson

and a team from three archaeological institutes

are lidar pioneers in the Amazon.

Could you just explain to me what Hdaris?

Yeah, lidar is a laser scanner.

It's a 3D laser scanner.

And here we have a rotating mirror through the glass. Mm-hm.

And the idea is that you shoot a lot of laser pulses at the ground.

So, lasers will shoot out, hit the mirror and the mirror's rotating,

so it can basically get the full spread

and it can create an incredibly detailed three-dimensional map

of the terrain.

ENGINE REVS

Yeah, you definitely get the motion sickness on the turns.

Leaping backwards and forwards like this

can be queasy work.

Yeah, you need a strong stomach.

The area we are scanning is mostly open floodplains...

...dotted with patches of forest.

It's incredible!

It is really surprising to me that this is the Amazon,

cos I wouldn't expect a massive floodplain.

Yeah, the diversity of the Amazon basin is just mind-boggling.

For humans, these are perfect locations to exist.

You get the best of both worlds.

You get all the resources of a savannah environment

as well as the benefits of a full forest.

Our main focus is an unusual mound

rising out of the otherwise flat landscape.

Coming up on the right, on the right side of the helicopter,

we're gonna come up on La Punta mound,

with a nice little white house on top.

Mark believes the mound is the relic of an ancient settlement,

possibly built more than 2,000 years ago.

Now he's in search of any signs

that it might have been part of something bigger.

When we were on the ground,

you could see that there were clusters of trees nearby,

but it was actually being up in the sky you could suddenly start seeing

the other mounds that are really close by

in really close proximity, like neighbours to the La Punta mound.

And suddenly you're thinking,

"All right, what's going on there?"

All right, so if we look at the map here, it's our current position.

YOU can see 6S we PFOQFBSS,

we're collecting new data that's coming out as we pass over.

Amazingly, lidar is working its magic again.

The scans reveal more man-made mounds nearby,

many hidden beneath the trees.

And the mounds are all different sizes,

with some much more impressive than others.

For Mark, that's curious,

as it could be evidence of social hierarchy,

a crucial stage towards large-scale societies.

The La Punta mound appears to be the epicentre

of something much bigger

and it might hold clues to the great civilisations I'm searching for.

I'm going there with archaeologist Carla Betancourt,

who recently began excavating the mound.

On our way, I can't resist

taking a closer look at some of the wildlife.

Can you see them?

Do you see the teeth on it? Look at that!

CARLA: So, welcome to La Punta.

It looks beautiful. Yeah, it's a beautiful landscape.

Already, in the first year of excavation,

Carla's uncovered a whole history of human occupation at La Punta.

This is amazing. Yeah, the stratigraphy is wonderful.

You can see this black layer.

That is the earliest layer... Oh!

...from when they started to build this mound.

Cos we are talking about maybe 1,000 years.

Are you kidding? That's wonderful!

The layers of soil contain signs of the people who lived here

at different points in Amazonian history.

Their pottery, their rubbish, even their bones.

So, that is a snapshot of 1,000 years. Yes.

How doesn't that give you goose bumps?

Like, seriously, how does that not give you goose bumps?

But it's the human remains discovered by Carla

that are giving us a window into ancient Amazonian society.

The unearthed skeleton of a man

buried with elaborate copper earrings

is a sure sign of status.

So, I think this man was an important man in this society.

Yeah, maybe a political character or something

and that is the reasons that we are thinking that there was

a society organised, also with hierarchies.

It seems privileged people

were living on the larger, more impressive mounds.

The lower classes left with the lower mounds.

It all fits with a complex class-based society.

Maybe there is something like a competition

between these different groups of people

and they are building this mound higher and higher.

One bigger than the other.

So, I think it is a sign of status or competition.

So, that's interesting, cos we know this in anthropology

that people do compete with higher and higher buildings.

Even today, we know that people do this.

People build a tower

and then somebody else tries to build a higher tower.

You get the idea. So, it's kind of blown my mind to think people

would be doing it with mounds,

cos you're keeping up with the Jones',

you're trying to compete.

I'm already building a picture of societies

more complex than experts ever imagined.

But the Spanish priest 500 years ago

talked of an even more advanced society,

of cities ruled by powerful lords.

800 miles east, in Brazil,

I'm hoping one indigenous community

can unlock that great ancient secret

and perhaps the mystery of what happened

to those lost civilisations.

Back in Brazil, I'm still investigating

the extraordinary diary of Spanish missionary, Gaspar De Carvajal.

In 1542, he was aboard one of the first

European explorations of the Amazon.

His account describes vast, sprawling settlements,

all along the river bank.

And he talks about one settlement being so large

that it stretched for five leagues,

that's about 27.5km,

without there intervening any space from house to house,

which was a marvellous thing to behold.

But when Europeans returned to the Amazon, years later,

all they found was forest.

And Carvajal's account of great Amazonian civilisations was dismissed.

Today, new approaches to archaeology are completely overturning

our understanding of the Amazon's history.

It's shocking, but for years,

we've ignored one critical piece of the puzzle.

But finally, indigenous peoples' own accounts

of their ancient history are leading the way.

The Kuikuro people live in the upper Xingu region of Brazil.

Today, there are just 500 of them.

WHOOPING

But they believe they're descendants

of a once-vast, ancient civilisation.

And Chief Afukaka is proud of that heritage.

American anthropologist Michael Heckenberger

works closely with the Kuikuro.

They've led him to a remote part of the forest,

where they say there are clues to their ancient past.

The site is surrounded by a massive, mysterious ditch.

When we'd mapped the extent of this ditch

around the archaeological site, it goes for over 2km.

That ditch enclosed an area of 50 hectares,

which is 20-times as large as the contemporary village.

So this was a massive earthen structure

that was built by a population that could mobilise labour

on a much larger scale and obviously supported a much larger population.

Michael believes the ancient Kuikuro built the ditch

as a defensive fortification, around 800 years ago.

Compared with today's village, the ancient settlement was huge.

But in other ways, it was incredibly similar.

So Michael can use the layout of today's village

to guide him around the archaeological site.

Starting, oddly, with the trash mounds

that families always build behind their houses.

What we set about looking for first was the trash mounds.

We assumed that, between the plaza and these trash mounds,

we would find the remains of ancient houses.

So we opened up this area,

looking for the remains of that actual house.

We came across, suddenly, a pot support,

it's a very distinctive ceramic artefact.

It's what they used to hold up their cooking pots.

This is an important breakthrough,

because the Kuikuro use very similar supports to help them cook today.

As soon as the Kuikuru saw that pot support,

they immediately knew what we were looking at.

They said, "This is the kitchen.

"The front door is going to be right there.

"The sleeping areas are going to be right there."

And sure enough, as we expanded our excavations,

we found remnants of the front door.

We found remnants of the sleeping area.

This ancient community was built on the same principles

as the contemporary community.

And these revelations are only the beginning.

GRUNTING

Investigating the surrounding area

has revealed that this settlement was not alone,

but part of an entire, ancient, urban network.

What really took me by surprise is how integrated they were.

They were all connected by roads,

and not just small paths through the tropical forest,

these were wide and well-constructed roads with kerbs.

Michael estimates this ancient, interconnected metropolis

was home to around 50,000 people, in just this area alone.

Much bigger than anything else we've seen.

It confirms what today's Kuikuro people have always believed.

Why not civilisations in the Amazon?

The pre-Columbian societies of the Amazon,

these were not that different from some of the classic civilisations

we look to in antiquity.

The evidence is now really stacking up

that ancient Amazon societies not only existed,

but did so on a scale and complexity

that, compared to today, is staggering.

Experts now believe as many as 10 million people

lived across the whole of the Amazon.

It looks like the ridiculed Spanish missionary, Gaspar De Carvajal,

may well have been telling the truth, after all.

But that raises another, huge question.

Where on earth did all those people go?

The truth is simple and tragic.

The early Europeans, possibly including Gaspar De Carvajal himself,

brought diseases that spread like wildfire

through the people of the Amazon.

It decimated those populations very quickly.

They had never had experience with these Old World diseases.

And once they hit, they would ravage entire villages

and quickly move from village to village,

precisely because these populations were interlinked

in very complex trade networks.

In some places, the lack of immunity

meant up to 90% of Amazonians perished

from influenza and smallpox.

Across the Americas, millions died

in one of the biggest demographic catastrophes in human history.

BELLS JANGLE

Some escaped death and enslavement by fleeing their cities.

But unlike the stone relics of other great civilisations,

their wooden cities rotted and disappeared beneath the forest.

Over the centuries, repeated contact with the outside world

has often spelt disaster.

Even in living memory.

Five centuries ago,

this area was populated by as many as 50,000 people.

Now there are only around 500.

Just 1% of a once-great metropolis.

And today, across the Amazon,

its people are still fighting for their survival.

Right now, the Brazilian rainforest

is being cleared at a terrifying rate...

BOLSANARO SPEAKS PORTUGUESE ..as President Bolsanaro's government

ruthlessly pursues economic growth.

In the last 50 years, a fifth of the rainforest has disappeared.

Cleared for timber and farming.

Indigenous peoples have seen their land taken away,

their forest destroyed.

But they're fighting back.

And they're discovering that their history

is an important weapon in the battle...

CHANTING

...as some communities try to prove the lands they occupy today

are traditional, indigenous homelands.

I've come to a remote river town called Tefe,

in the northwest of Brazil.

From here I'm travelling up-river to meet the Kokama,

an indigenous community that live in fear of eviction.

But they've been finding unusual pottery,

which they hope will help them to stay in their ancestral home.

The Kokama people believe these artefacts

are from an ancient Amazonian society.

The problem is, we don't even know that they are that old.

We haven't even verified that they are authentic,

and the reason for that is no archaeologist

has actually examined them

and that's because the Kokama are actually quite protective over them

and they are refusing to release them to archaeologists.

And so I'm, I'm feeling somewhat beside myself,

I'm feeling really excited,

because they are actually letting me see them.

We're here.

All right, here we go.

Hi! Nice to meet you. Thank you for having us.

I am really, really honoured to see them.

And thank you, cos I feel like everybody's come out

to see them with me!

The Kokama's lifestyle has continually changed with the times.

But they also claim centuries of history on this land.

And Chief Anildo has made it his life's work

to protect his people from the threat of eviction.

Although they're nervous of outsiders, Chief Anildo has agreed

to show me the artefacts they've discovered nearby.

Ooh!

It's the first time they've shown them to any archaeologist.

Ah, OK.

0h!

You can see there's quite a bit of design going on here.

Belais and her friend Teresa discovered these pieces

while they were collecting Brazil nuts.

It's hard to tell much from a simple broken pot...

...but I'm quickly led to another house...

SHE GASPS

...and what could be an ancient treasure trove.

It's like a hidden museum around here!

Look at that! Oh, my gosh, that's face, isn't it?

This is easily, so far, of everything I've seen,

the most, kind of, intact, and most spectacular, really.

It's an archaeological artefact, it could be ancient, um,

and it's just kind of loitering here in a back bedroom.

It's a delicate situation,

cos these things have been in the ground for a very long time,

and that's what's preserved them.

If they were out in the open air, in this sweltering heat,

they would not have survived.

The concern is that something like this, you want protect it,

and you want to protect it for the Kokama, actually,

not...not just for the archaeologists.

If the pottery can be proved to be ancient artefacts,

it could be powerful evidence

in the case the Kokama are building against eviction.

But they've consistently refused to show the pots to outsiders.

Why were you afraid to let others see them?

They simply don't trust government officials.

They're worried that if the pots are taken away,

they will disappear for good,

ending any hope they have of remaining on their ancestral land.

OK, I'm good with fish. Fish is...fish is good.

Fish is good.

I really hope I can help the Kokama prove

that people have been living here for centuries.

Tomorrow will be the day of reckoning

in their desperate battle against eviction.

Thank you so much, thank you.

Thank you!

Obrigada.

So, I guess today is going to be really dramatic,

and I'm really hoping not traumatic for the Kokama,

because we've organised for a specialist in Amazonian pottery

to come down and to essentially assess and examine the pottery,

so that they can tell us if the pottery is actually ancient or not.

The Kokama have allowed me to invite Eduardo Tamanaha,

an expert in ancient Amazonian artefacts,

to judge whether the pottery really is pre-Columbian,

made before the arrival of the Spanish, more than 500 years ago.

How's it going? Hi.

This is the chief.

The Kokama's hope of proving this is ancient indigenous land

rests on Eduardo's judgment.

And I'm incredibly nervous about how all this might turn out.

Suddenly, I'm...

...l'm really rooting for this stuff to be pre-Columbian,

because, you know, it is a wonderful community.

You see here, just... The kids, they just come up to you, they say hello.

Hey!

It's quite...upsetting to think that

that might not be the conclusion, you know? This is not pre-Columbian.

But this is archaeology, it's science,

and sometimes you don't get the results that you want.

And it can be, er, upsetting.

That's not a...a nice feeling, at all.

So much here, it's just kind of finding spots for it,

it's like a treasure trove.

It's the moment of truth.

I'm studying your face, Eduardo.

Trying to see if I can see any clues.

Well, what signs are you looking for?

There are some signs that we can see if they are ancient,

or not so ancient.

What type of technology they used to make this pottery.

The colour of the clay, what did they put in the base of this clay, too?

Is there anything interesting that you could tell me maybe about this one?

Well, here, we can see what they put in this clay.

It's the speckliness, right?

Yes. Slight speckles, spot and stuff.

That is from the tree bark that they burn and mix with the clay.

To...to make the pottery.

Oh, gosh, yeah, yeah. We call it "caraipe".

You can actually see that.

Yeah, it's very small.

And it is a very old technology.

All right, this one.

Hm...

That's very interesting, because you can see here the Yuma face.

Right? Yeah. We have here the Yuma face. Uh-huh.

Probably they mixed something with red,

to make the eyes, the ears, the nose.

It's very typical on archaeological sites in the Amazon.

So, I guess this is the big moment.

Um...what's your professional opinion?

Well, definitely, with no doubt, it is all ancient pottery.

All of this is pre-Columbian, and probably with 1,000 or 1,500 years ago.

Shut up! That's amazing, really? Yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

I'm so glad!

I feel really, really excited with that,

because it is a great collection that they have.

That is really amazing.

Eduardo?

You're Brazilian, do you want to...

...do you want to tell them the good news?

APPLAUSE Yeah!

Give us a high one.

It really couldn't be better news.

It's persuasive evidence that indigenous people,

probably Kokama themselves,

have lived here for well over 1,000 years.

It means their ancestors may well

have been part of those great civilisations...

...that the Spanish missionary, Carvajal,

witnessed all those centuries ago.

CHIEF SNIFFLES

God, this is...

Chief, how are you feeling,

and what does this mean for you, and for the Kokama?

APPLAUSE

It's a moving end to the first part of my epic mission.

To explore how the story of the ancient Amazon

is being completely rewritten by brand-new discoveries.

What I've seen in the Amazon has blown my mind.

Because it has completely changed my perception.

See, we thought of the Amazon, historically,

as being this wilderness with a few indigenous groups in it.

But we're finding out that, actually, just a few hundred years ago,

complex societies existed in the Amazon.

Societies with infrastructure, with roads, with hierarchy.

But my Amazon adventure is only just beginning,

and I want to find out so much more.

How did they get here?

How did they survive and thrive in such large numbers,

in such an inhospitable place?

Next time, I'm going deep into dangerous Columbian territory...

We basically got our visa from a bunch of rebels.

...to discover never-seen-before ancient rock art.

This is the prehistoric Sistine ChapeL

I come face-to-face with the remains of ancient Amazonians.

They are 6,000 years old.

And I meet a people who are changing the story...

You share DNA with people in Australia.

...of one of the greatest ever human journeys.

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