A great discovery: the Upano Valley archaeological sites

The Upano Valley sites are a collection of archaeological sites in the Amazon rainforest. They are situated in the Upano River valley in eastern Ecuador. The towns are estimated to have been inhabited as early as 500 BC, predating any other known complex Amazonian society by more than a millennium. <img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*8vpeUyAOk2gLAjARHWZA-Q.jpeg" style="height:341px; width:700px" /> The first evidence of premodern occupancy in the Upano Valley region was discovered in the 1970s. Archaeologist Stéphen Rostain of France’s National Centre for Scientific Research began excavating in the region in the 1990s. Exploration of the sites accelerated after the Ecuadorian government funded a LIDAR scan of the Upano Valley in 2015, allowing for the identification of many more towns than had previously been discovered. In January 2024, Rostain’s team published their findings from the LIDAR scan in Science. <a href="https://medium.com/@annapichiri759/a-great-discovery-the-upano-valley-archaeological-sites-8f45d24a9085">Click Here</a>