Ben Harris-Roxas - Starting 2,000 year ago, an indigenous "garden urbanist" culture developed in Ecuador with more than 6,000 gardening platforms and 15 urban centres linked by roads

From Scientific American:

Archaeologists recently rediscovered the long-hidden traces of an ancient Indigenous society in western Ecuador’s Upano Valley: more than 6,000 earthen platforms that once supported houses and communal buildings in 15 urban centers, set amid vast tracts of carefully drained farmland and linked by a network of roads

Link to peer reviewed publication

Map from the journal article. &10;&10;Anthropogenic features in the center of the Kilamope site, including residential platforms, dug footpaths, and agricultural structures. The four images on the right side of the figure illustrate different LIDAR visualizations used to interpret the digital elevation model in the same area (dotted rectangle) in order to highlight the drained-fields pattern.