The Amazon rainforest is hiding thousands of geometric earthworks built by Indigenous societies—and a 2026 airborne LiDAR survey has revealed hundreds that were previously undocumented. The study observed 432 structures in one surveyed area of southwestern Amazonia. Its much larger estimates for the region’s total number of earthworks and past population are models, not direct counts.
What ancient secret is the Amazon rainforest hiding?
It is a human-made landscape: geometric enclosures shaped from ditches and earthen embankments, known as Amazonian geoglyphs. They are not the remains of a newly discovered city with known streets and buildings. Rather, they are evidence that Indigenous societies shaped and occupied parts of the forest long before European colonization.
A study published in Nature on 29 July 2026 reports 432 earthworks detected across a 4,497-square-kilometre survey area in southwestern Amazonia; 396 had not previously been documented. The researchers combine their findings with satellite studies to estimate that the approximately 183,000-square-kilometre Aquiry region may contain 24,000–30,000 earthworks. They also estimate a peak population of about 1.25–3 million in the region between AD 100 and 300. Those regional totals are extrapolations, not structures or people counted directly by the survey. Nature Portfolio’s summary of the findings and the study paper describe the estimates and their scope.
How did LiDAR reveal structures beneath the forest?
Researchers surveyed from aircraft carrying LiDAR, a system that sends out laser pulses and records their returns. Those measurements can be processed into a point cloud and a model of the terrain. By examining terrain models and shaded relief, archaeologists can spot subtle ditches, embankments and geometric outlines that are difficult to recognize in ordinary satellite images or from ground level.
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Archaeologists manually reviewed the mapped forms and calculated their locations and sizes. Eetu Puttonen, an associate professor at Finland’s National Land Survey, said: “The use of laser scanning in archaeological research is not new, but it has not been utilised on this scale in the Amazon region before.” The agency’s technical account of the survey notes that the work also considered Indigenous research ethics.
LiDAR is not a perfect census tool. Very dense canopy can make it impossible to distinguish the ground surface clearly, so some earthworks may remain undetected even in surveyed areas. The 432 structures are therefore the survey’s observed count, not proof that every structure within its coverage was found.
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What do the estimates mean—and what do they not mean?
The study’s figures refer to different things and should not be read as equally certain counts:
- 432 earthworks: structures identified within the study’s 4,497-square-kilometre survey area; 396 were previously undocumented.
- 24,000–30,000 earthworks: an estimate for the approximately 183,000-square-kilometre Aquiry region, extrapolated from the survey and considered alongside existing satellite studies.
- 1.25–3 million people: the authors’ estimate for the region’s population peak between AD 100 and 300, not a head count established by LiDAR.
The 2026 study’s survey covered only a small part of Greater Amazonia. It did not map every place in the estimated Aquiry region, much less count all earthworks across the entire basin. “Aquiry” is the cultural region discussed in the study; the label alone does not establish that its inhabitants formed one uniform polity.
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How does this compare with earlier Amazon-wide estimates?
A separate 2023 study estimated that more than 10,000 earthworks could still be hidden across Amazonia. That was a basin-wide projection based on different remote-sensing and archaeological datasets and statistical modeling, not a direct count. The 2026 estimate concerns the Aquiry region and combines a new LiDAR survey with satellite studies. Because the geography, methods and quantities differ, the totals should not be added or treated as competing measurements of the same area. The Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology’s account summarizes the earlier projection; the original study is published in Science.
Other mapping efforts provide additional context but use separate coverage and methods. An Archaeological Institute of America account published in 2024 reported more than 1,300 geoglyphs and other ditched enclosures detected in satellite imagery, with hundreds checked on the ground. That mapping update is not part of the 2026 LiDAR survey’s count.
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What do the earthworks look like?
The structures are geometric forms made by digging ditches and raising earthen walls or embankments. They can be circles, squares, rectangles, or combinations of shapes, and some are connected by paths or straight ditches. According to Nature Portfolio’s summary, the structures range from 0.35 to 14 hectares; the largest known geoglyph covers nearly 50 hectares. The largest known example is a separate comparison, not the upper end of the reported range for the structures described in that summary.
Brazil’s 2015 UNESCO Tentative List submission for the Geoglyphs of Acre describes figures formed by earthen walls and ditches, many in eastern Acre between streams and wetlands, particularly around the Acre and Iquiri rivers. It recorded 306 archaeological sites comprising 410 earthen structures in Acre at that time, while noting that counts grew with continued research and that research remained sparse. That is a dated, Acre-only record—not a current Amazon-wide total. The UNESCO entry is a Tentative List submission, not an inscription on the World Heritage List.
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Who built the geoglyphs, and what were they for?
The earthworks demonstrate substantial human activity and landscape modification, but their exact functions remain unsettled. Researchers have proposed ceremonial, symbolic, ritual, political, public-gathering or residential uses; the shapes alone do not prove any one explanation.
Nor can every structure be assigned to a specific named Indigenous people. UNESCO’s Acre entry says the ethnic affiliation of the builders has not been precisely established. The entry places occupation evidence broadly between approximately 200 BC and AD 1300, a span wider than the 2026 study’s estimated population peak between AD 100 and 300.
A report in Scientific American noted questions raised by an outside archaeologist: nearby structures might sometimes have been counted separately or combined, and frequent relocation could create a high density of sites without implying an equally high population density at one time. These are caveats about interpretation, not established refutations of the study’s estimates.
Why the discovery matters
The new survey adds direct evidence of hundreds of earthworks in its mapped area and shows how much archaeological information can be obscured by forest cover. It supports a picture of Amazonia as a landscape with a deep history of Indigenous settlement and land use, rather than an untouched wilderness before Europeans arrived. But neither the LiDAR images nor the regional projections resolve who built each structure, how communities used them, or how many people lived in any one place at a given time.
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