The Amazon rainforest is the world's largest rainforest and contains many strange and mysterious creatures. It covers nearly 40 per cent of South America, stretching over 9 countries, and contains many different ecosystems. Even though it covers a lot of territories, only about 20 per cent of the Amazon is actually in the jungle. The rest is in towns, farming areas, and other ecosystems outside the forest. Most of the water in the forest comes from the clouds that rain in from the sky-blanketed Amazon Basin thousands of feet above.
The Amazon is packed with unique fauna. Fauna is the general term for animals. Including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals. Most of these animals are unique to the Amazon; only around 1 per cent of the world's fauna lives in the Amazon. The most famous Amazonian animal is the pink dolphin. Other famous faunas include giant anteaters, giant llamas, and jaguars. These animals largely contribute to the rainforest's balance.
If one word is meant to describe the Amazon rainforest it would be a mysterious place. Many people visit the Amazon every year just to experience this enormous wilderness up close and personal. They travel there to hunt, fish, hike, and see wildlife. In this article, we’ll be covering a few of the amazon mysteries that left scientists in awe.
Source: Science
Geoglyphs: The Mystery of Huge Ditches
Geoglyphs are one-of-a-kind ditches with distinctive geometric shapes that can be found in the Amazon rainforest. They were made after humans had already started changing the ecology of the forest, but new research says that the purpose of these huge ditches is still a mystery.
Between the first and fifteenth centuries, trenches measuring up to 36 feet (11 meters) wide and 13 feet (4 meters) deep were dug to create the geoglyphs. According to Jenny Watling, an archaeologist at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil who led the research while she was a doctoral candidate at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, the geoglyphs were discovered in the 1980s, when the earthworks were exposed by deforestation for cattle ranching and other agricultural purposes.
Watling said that the question was about how the landscape looked before the geoglyphs were built. Watling stated, "There's been a very big debate circulating for decades now about how pristine or man-made the Amazonian forests are."According to the new study, humans have been altering these forests for approximately 4,000 years.
The researchers report that the analyses of the soil found in the Geoglyphs revealed that charcoal layers appeared approximately 4,000 years ago, around the same time that archaeological evidence indicates that humans moved into the region.
The charcoal shows fires that would have been started by humans to clear the forest. According to the analysis, palm trees increased in number in the forest as humans began to alter the landscape.
Watling said that because palms provided both food and building material, people probably encouraged their growth. The researchers wrote that palms are among the first trees to reappear after the forest has been cleared, but they eventually lose out to larger, slower-growing trees.
Since palms remained abundant for approximately 3,000 years, it is likely that humans were altering this cycle to prevent younger trees from taking over useful palms. According to the findings of the researchers, palms resumed their decline approximately 650 years after the geoglyphs were abandoned.
Source: sswm
Terra Preta: The Special Black Soil Found in Amazon
Terra Preta which means black soil in Portuguese; is a dark, fertile soil that was found in the Amazon. It was the only way to explain the reason why some plant communities grow in that same exact soil and not in the forest that surrounds it. Higher in biomass and containing a greater proportion of edible species like Brazil nuts and acai palms, the dark soils are extremely fertile. They frequently contain artefacts like ceramics or stone tool fragments.
Because they have been found in Africa, Australia, Europe, and other places other than the Amazon, these soils are referred to as terra preta, Amazonian dark earth (ADEs), or simply dark earth.
Because almost all researchers agree that they were created by humans, they are also known as anthrosols. At hundreds of archaeological sites throughout the Amazon basin, dark earth ranging in size from 6,000 to 18,000 square kilometres has been discovered. Terra preta soils could cover more than 150,000 square kilometres or 3.2% of the forest.
Amazonia was alive before Europeans arrived, bringing conflict, exploitation, and infectious diseases that killed more than 90% of the population. The number of people who lived there prior to the European conquest is still up for debate among archaeologists, but several estimates place the number between 6 million and 10 million.
The indigenous Amazonians lived on bluffs with views of the rivers, where they fished, hunted, gathered food, and planted gardens. They cultivated manioc, sweet potato, and cacao among other plants.
They altered wetlands, constructed roads, and carried out extensive earthworks. To control the landscape, they light low-intensity fires. And just like everyone else, they made trash: pottery, fishbones, shells, manioc peelings, manure, crop residues, weeds, and shells, as well as charcoal.
They transformed that trash into a treasure over time, resulting in rich, fertile soil suitable for crop cultivation. The process also kept a lot of carbon in the soil by sequestering it. Now, researchers from a wide range of fields are looking into terra preta for answers, not only because of the new story it tells about the past of Amazonia but also because of the lessons, possibilities, and warnings it may have for Earth's future.
Source: Twitter
Mapinguary: The Immortal
The Mapinguari, or Mapinguary, is said to have been an Amazonian shaman who discovered the key to immortality thousands of years ago, according to Brazilian myths. As a result of his discovery, he was severely punished by the gods and forced to become a hairy, wandering beast for the rest of his life.
Modern sightings depict the beast as a massive sloth, whereas earlier sightings described it as an ape-like creature due to the name being applied to what appear to be different cryptids. The Mapinguari is thought to be either mylodontids or megalonychids—medium-sized giant ground sloths that lived in the region during the Ice Age.
Additionally, the creature is said to have a horrible smell that can make a man unconscious. Occasionally, it is said to be a humanoid with a stomach-centred mouth. It has long claws, caiman skin, backward feet, and a second mouth on its belly, according to some accounts. Investigator David Oren collected some Mapinguari "hair" and "droppings" samples, which turned out to be the deposits of giant anteaters and the hair of small rodents.
Those were some of the hidden mysteries of Amazon rainforests, some of them are true and some are less likely to be true. Scientists can only give approximate explanations of what they have found and what they have heard from the tribes living there. There might still be numerous other mysteries in that giant diversified ecosystem that are still to be discovered and solved.
Written by: Abderrahmane Loudiyi
Edited by: Nidhi Jha
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