Original subtitles

Narrator: The amazon rainforest --

A breathtaking natural wonder.

It has always been seen as a pristine wilderness,

Home to no more than a handful of small tribes.

But today, the amazon is at the center of a monumental mystery.

According to one centuries-old account,

Giant cities once thrived in the jungle.

And now, astonishing discoveries...

This is incredible.

There's so much here.

...Are raising, the question -- could that be true?

There were many people living in the amazon.

Narrator: With new technology,

Scientists are searching for clues

To solve the mystery of a missing civilization...

These were much more complex societies

Than we thought existed.

Narrator: ...Where they came from...

There's a sign of ancestry in you

That is very unique and very special.

...And what happened to them.

For the people living here, it was a catastrophic event.

And people just ran away.

Narrator: It's a dangerous place,

But emerging from the rainforest today

Is the greatest human story that's never been told.

[ all shouting ]

-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com

Captions paid for by discovery communications

♪

Across the amazon rainforest,

Archeologists today are making incredible discoveries...

Check this baby.

Narrator: ...Traces of a once great civilization lost in the jungle.

Mark robinson is one of hundreds of scientists

Trying to solve a mystery.

How did these lost civilizations

Ever flourish in such a hostile jungle?

His mission starts by tracing the footsteps

Of the earliest humans to ever reach the amazon.

Scientists believe the first humans to reach the americas

Made an epic migration across asia.

At least 15,000 years ago,

They crossed an ancient land bridge from siberia to alaska

Before traveling down through north america

And finally crossing through the narrow darién gap

To land in modern-day colombia.

That's where mark begins his search for clues.

Until now, any attempts to find evidence of the first amazonians

Here in colombia have been impossible.

For the last 50 years, much of the country

Has been a no-go zone for archeologists

As a brutal civil war played out between the colombian government

And a rebel group known as the farc.

But a recent peace agreement is allowing mark

And a team of colombian archeologists

To explore the jungles once more.

♪

Mark targets the cliffs of serranía la lindosa,

A series of spectacular rocky outcrops

Bursting out of the jungle

On the northwest fringe of the amazon.

Early humans would have been attracted

To prominent landscape features like this,

So it's the perfect place

To look for traces of human activity.

♪

♪

What mark finds decorating the rock walls

Takes him by surprise.

Hundreds of drawings painted in red ocher.

Strange, intricate patterns --

Animals, plants, human figures.

It all looks prehistoric, but who painted it?

Mark has studied similar paintings before.

He can spot clues that tell him what they mean.

♪

Who painted these images?

Mark scours the strange designs for clues.

The weird geometric shapes could be the seeds of plants.

Mark has discovered what these rock artists were eating.

They painted a virtual menu on the walls.

And it reveals these people were hunter-gatherers.

Mark searches for more clues.

[ singing in native language ]

[ whooping ]

♪

In many parts of the amazon today,

Dance is still a powerful means of expression.

For the kuikuro people of brazil's xingu region,

Every stage of life has a ritual attached to it.

They dance to celebrate a chief,

A successful hunt,

A good haul of fish,

And the ripening of fruit.

To mark the coming of puberty,

To honor the dead,

And to ward off disease.

Dance is a vital part of their tradition --

A way to tell stories from their past

And to pass on their history to future generations.

A legacy chief afukaká kuikuro is determined will continue.

Mark wants to know if the first roots of societies

Like the kuikuro can be traced to these painted cliffs.

First he must find out how old they are.

But there's a problem.

Radiocarbon dating won't work.

♪

But there's hope of finding an answer,

Because last year,

Mark and his team explored even deeper into the forest.

What they found was jaw dropping.

There isn't just one painted wall.

Incredibly, they have identified another 16 sites,

And even more may lay hidden in the jungle.

There could be tens of thousands of images out there,

And any one of them could reveal who painted these cliffs

And when.

To find out if these paintings

Really are the work of the first amazonians,

Mark needs to hunt for more clues.

That means trekking deeper into the rainforest

To reach new and unexplored sites.

Narrator: When the first europeans

Arrived in the amazon 500 years ago,

They claimed to have seen endless cities

Stretching for miles along the riverbanks.

But later, explorers saw no trace of any civilization --

Just a few scattered nomadic tribes.

It seemed impossible that a vast population

Could ever flourish here

In one of the most remote, hostile places on earth.

But across the amazon,

Scientists are now uncovering evidence

That those early reports may have been right.

Archeologist mark robinson is on a mission to trace

That once great civilization back to its very earliest roots.

Hidden in the colombian jungle

On the northern fringes of the amazon,

He's found a series

Of spectacular prehistoric paintings.

But can he prove they are the work

Of the very first humans to set foot in south america?

♪

♪

♪

It's time to climb higher.

♪

♪

Hidden among the thousands of pictures,

Mark finds something strange.

It could be the clue he's been looking for.

Further along the cliff face are other extinct animals --

An ancient camel-like creature

And a giant sloth surrounded by human hunters.

One image surprises mark most of all.

Mastodons were prehistoric relatives

Of elephants and mammoths.

And they did once live on the fringes of the amazon.

Although it's a rough image, it's vital evidence

To help mark date the paintings.

These paintings were made by humans

Who lived alongside the giant prehistoric creatures,

Animals that are now extinct.

They must have been painted at least 12,000 years ago

When humans were taking some of their first steps

Into the amazon.

♪

Marc has found traces of some of the first human life

In the amazon here in colombia.

These paintings were made

Right at the start of the new stone age,

Perhaps a thousand years before the dawn of agriculture

In the fertile crescent of the middle east.

But if amazon history began here at the northern fringe

Of the forest, how deep into the jungle

Did those early hunter-gatherers get.

In brazil, archeologist edithe pereira believes

She has found an answer.

More than two and a half thousand miles from colombia,

Close to a town called monte alegre

On the banks of the amazon river,

A series of cliffs conceal an ancient cave

Known as caverna da pedra pintada --

The cave of the painted rock.

Deep inside the caves,

Edith has discovered something incredible.

Like the art in colombia,

The ocher paintings themselves can't be radiocarbon dated.

But these artists left behind vital clues,

Because while they worked, they spilled paint,

And some of that paint fell around their campfires.

With ancient charcoal,

Edith was able to use radiocarbon dating

To find out how long ago the rock artist

Reached this cave right at the heart of the amazon forest.

These caves were painted at almost exactly the same time

As the cliffs in colombia more than 1,000 miles away.

Early humans must have spread quickly

Through the amazon rainforest,

Laying the foundations for new jungle societies

Right from the very beginning.

But how did that primitive hunter-gatherer society

Ever become a sophisticated civilization in the jungle,

One that thrived for thousands of years

Before the europeans arrived?

Far to the south on the flood plains of bolivia,

Could these mysterious manmade jungle islands

Provide the answer?

♪

Narrator: Archeologists have traced the roots

Of amazon society to colombia

At least 12,000 years ago and found evidence

That they spread quickly into the heart of the rainforest.

Now, across the amazon, they are uncovering evidence

That those early hunter-gatherers

Eventually flourished into a great civilization.

But how they made that major transition

In such a hostile environment

Is one of the greatest mysteries of the amazon.

And it's a mystery

Earth scientist umberto lombardo

Is determined to solve.

His mission has taken him into the lowlands

Of northern bolivia...

To the llanos de mojos,

A vast expanse of tropical floodplain

Covering an area the size of illinois.

♪

♪

For six months of the year in the dry season,

These plains bake hard under a relentless sun.

But flowing through this arid land are rivers

Carrying water from the andes down into the amazon basin.

And when the wet season begins,

The rivers burst their banks, drowning

The low-lying plains for half of the year.

Today, this harsh environment is a land of cowboys and cattle.

But scattered across the plains are mysterious clues

To a much older society.

Strange islands of forest.

♪

Umberto spots something very strange

About the ground the trees are growing on.

[ thudding ]

♪

Incredibly, the bedrock of the forest island is formed

From a massive pile of discarded snail shells.

Umberto believes that snails were a major part

Of the ancient human diet here in the floodplains.

And he thinks that the first people to settle here

Built their homes on top of their leftover meals.

At first, the mounds were simply trash piles.

But eventually they grew higher

Than the annual floods,

Over many centuries,

The snail shells grew higher and higher until bushes and trees

Began to grow on the fertile mounds.

The new islands of the forest offered shelter

From the sun and safety from the floods --

The perfect place to build a home.

♪

They may have been man-made,

But did people ever settle for good on the islands?

Were these the accidental foundations

Of the first settled amazon society?

Umberto and a team of archeologists

May have found the answer

By digging deep into the core of the mound.

In amongst the discarded shells --

Human burials.

♪

♪

Umberto's discovery is a stroke of luck

Because in amazonia, harsh, acidic soils mean

That buried bones are rarely preserved.

But on the forest islands, chemical deposits

From all of the crushed snail shells

Have coated the bones in a thick, protective mineral layer.

♪

♪

♪

Umberto knows that many prehistoric societies buried

Their dead beneath their homes.

So these remains could mean that early amazonians

Were building settled communities on these mounds.

And the skulls are full of clues

That tell umberto even more about how they survived here.

♪

♪

But best of all, radiocarbon dating shows umberto

When these people lived.

♪

♪

It's an incredible discovery.

These bones are beyond ancient.

While europe was still in the stone age, 1,000 years

Before the great pyramids of egypt were built,

2,000 years before the rise of the maya,

The first amazon societies

Were claiming south america as their own.

In the llanos de mojos,

They learn to change the world around them

To create shelter, security, and food,

And to create a network of forest islands

That formed one of the amazon's very first societies.

But what happened to these forest-island people?

In search of an answer,

Umberto takes soil samples from the floodplain

Around the forest islands.

♪

♪

Beneath the modern black soil

Is a thick layer of sediment --

The telltale sign of an ancient flood event.

Below that sediment,

Umberto finds what he's looking for.

♪

Another layer of black soil

That he believes formed at the time

The forest-island dwellers were living here.

♪

♪

The soil cores show that after people had lived here

For thousands of years, the river changed its course,

Drowning the entire area beneath at least 3 feet of water.

♪

♪

To the north lay the amazon rainforest itself.

The floodplain society

Had learned to transform their environment

To create permanent homes.

Could they do the same in the hostile jungle?

♪

♪

Narrator: Archeologists have traced the path of early humans

From the fringes of the jungle in northern colombia

To the floodplains of bolivia.

But how did they make the leap into the hostile forest itself

To lay the foundations for a future jungle civilization?

In the west of brazil, on the banks of the upper amazon

And not far from the town of tefé

Is a small riverside community

Called bom jesus da ponta de castanha.

♪

The village is surrounded by rainforest,

Which provides the community

With almost all the food they need.

But that presents ecologist carolina levis

And archaeobotanist mariana cassino

With a mystery...

...Because most jungle soil is nowhere near fertile enough

To grow crops in.

So how could a village, let alone a whole civilization,

Feed themselves here in the jungle?

Carolina and mariana search the forest for clues.

♪

There is something unusual about the forest here.

♪

The forest around the village is densely packed with fruit

And nut trees.

In the wild, they never grow this close together.

♪

The weirdest thing is the sheer number

Of ancient towering brazil nut trees around the village

Growing in clusters known as stands.

♪

♪

♪

The scientists believe that much of the jungle around here

Was actually planted by ancient amazonians.

Local guide jucelino knows how villagers still plant trees.

♪

♪

Carolina and mariana believe

That ancient populations selected

And nurtured the best tree species for centuries,

Creating a bountiful supply of food.

[ speaking spanish ]

♪

Woman: Mm-hmm.

♪

Even so, a huge civilization

Can't survive just on fruits and nuts.

Back in the village center,

Carolina and mariana are searching for even more clues.

Cuidado.

[ speaking spanish ]

The locals have told carolina

And mariana that the founders of this modern village

Chose the site very carefully.

[ speaking spanish ]

And one thing in particular led them here --

The color of the soil.

[ speaking spanish ]

♪

♪

Most amazon soils are yellow or red

And useless for growing crops.

But around the village,

The topsoil is unusually dark and fertile.

♪

Luckily, the mysterious soil is also packed with clues --

Fragments of ancient pottery.

♪

♪

This soil is man-made, transformed into a super-compost

By ancient people digging charcoal and food

Waste into the ground.

♪

The excavations have shown these soils

Have been transformed over a thousand years

Or more to create a fertile oasis in the jungle.

And it's not just here that the black earth is being found.

♪

♪

So far, scientists have identified

Over 1,000 black earth sites throughout the amazon,

And by mapping the trees

That typically grow in these fertile soils,

The staggering extent of human transformation of the amazon

Can be revealed...

Solving the mystery of how large populations

Could survive in the jungle.

♪

♪

Across the amazon, scientists are discovering

That the rainforest is anything but an untouched wilderness.

Now we know vast areas are the work of ancient amazonians

Who learned to nurture and shape

The jungle enough to support a civilization.

But now an incredible discovery is adding a new twist

To the human story of the amazon.

It undermines one of the most fundamental beliefs

About the enigmatic people of the amazon --

That they all share one family tree

That goes back to north america. At least 15,000 years ago.

Do these extraordinary people

Actually have roots somewhere else?

♪

♪

Narrator: In brazil, paleoanthropologist ella al-shamahi is on her way

To meet an extraordinary indigenous community,

The suruí.

Recent research has revealed that they hold the key

To solving one of the greatest mysteries

In the rise of amazon civilizations.

Where did they all come from?

So, would you call this a frontier town?

Yeah, a frontier town.

More or less, yeah.

Ella is trying to discover whether the suruí themselves

Can shed any light on the mystery

Of how their ancient ancestors first arrived in the amazon.

So, basically, this whole area used to be indigenous territory.

Yeah, the whole area, the whole state.

It was virgin rainforest, I mean, if you can say that.

Yeah.

To reach them, she has to travel

Through miles of open farmland.

Like many of today's amazonian people,

The suruí face the constant threat of deforestation.

But it's not just their territory and culture

That are at stake --

It's the extraordinary story

Of how their ancestors arrived in the amazon.

♪

There they are.

Hi.

[ speaking foreign language ]

[ speaking native language ]

So nice to meet you.

Chief almir suruí welcomes ella into the village

To meet his family.

Thank you for coming out. Okay.

So, is this... Walk through there.

Hi. Ah, your brother.

Hi. Ella. Ella.

Ella has come here to share a revelation

With the suruí.

Scientists studying blood samples

Collected from them in the 1960s have found that suruí dna

Tells a remarkable story about their ancestry.

But no one has ever told them.

♪

-[ laughs ] -hey.

Hi. Hi.

♪

Can I ask when and how was your blood taken?

♪

♪

Did you ever hear from them again?

Did you ever get any results from them?

♪

Narrator: Chief almir gathers his community

To hear what ella has come to tell them.

Hi.

So, if I do it this way...

Chief almir: [ speaking native language ]

How many of you are really familiar with this map?

There's something really interesting

About yourselves, actually. The suruí.

It turns out that you,

Unlike most other indigenous groups in south america --

You share some dna,

Some ancestry with people in australia.

♪

It has always been believed

That every indigenous group in the amazon

Can trace their family tree back to the same ancient ancestors

Who arrived in south america at least 12,000 years ago.

But dna from the suruí

And just two other tribes tells a different story.

It has a distinctive signature

That is only found in indigenous people

From the andaman islands,

Papua new guinea, and australia.

It means that you're very unique.

It means that there's something really interesting

Going on with you.

And there's a sign of ancestry in you

That really is is very unique and very special.

The suruís' ancient ancestors must come from a different place

And a different time from almost every other tribe in the amazon.

Somehow they are connected to australia.

And the amazon family tree

Is much more complicated than we ever realized.

But it seems the revelation

Is not as much of a surprise to the suruí as ella expected.

♪

If I do it this way...

Narrator: Paleoanthropologist ella al-shamahi has revealed

To the suruí people that they share an ancestral link

With indigenous australians,

Making them unique from other amazonian tribes.

But as the news sinks in, it seems the idea

That they have exotic ancestry from a far-off land

Is less of a revelation to the suruí than ella expected.

♪

♪

The suruí have made a connection

Between their own ancestral stories

And the scientific evidence.

Are you surprised by that?

♪

♪

Scientists are only beginning to unravel

The great mystery of the amazon's human story.

But the suruí reveal that surviving indigenous people

Have a crucial role to play.

Their ancient cultures contain clues

That can help solve the mystery.

And ella realizes that

Unless their way of life can be protected,

That knowledge may disappear forever.

Al-shamahi: So, this has been

A completely profound experience, actually.

We, the outside world, I think, have to give them

So much more respect.

And we scientists also have to give them

So much more respect and help,

Because if we let the loggers

And the miners win,

We will have lost

One of the most fascinating pieces of the jigsaw puzzle

When it comes to amazonian history,

One of the most ancient people,

And it would just be absolutely devastating.

[ thunder crashes ]

♪

Narrator: Archeologists today are discovering

How the earliest humans learned

To shape the amazon rainforest around them,

Laying the foundations for a great civilization

In the jungle.

Their discoveries are revolutionizing

Our understanding of this remarkable environment

And of the future of its indigenous people,

Who shaped the forest, but now fight to preserve

Thousands of years of unbroken heritage.

♪

♪

♪

♪