Thousands of years ago, those who dwelled in the Amazon created amazingly intricate Stonehenge-like designs, and they have only just been revealed thanks to new satellite images and deforestation of the region. 

Researchers have found more than 450 of these geoglyphs, which exist both as stone and as drawings in the ground.

They hope this can help them gain insight on how people in that region lived before Europeans arrived.

Jennifer Watling, from the University of Sao Paolo’s Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, who has been studying the newfound geoglyphs, says that they have been maintained over the course of the roughly two thousand years of their existence with respect to the Amazonian ecosystem.

She also thinks that they may have served as an ancient ritual gathering place for those living in nearby villages.

She remarked on its similarity to the famous Stonehenge:

“It is interesting to note that the format of the geoglyphs, with an outer ditch and inner wall enclosure, are what classicly describe henge sites. The earliest phases at Stonehenge consisted of a similarly layed-out enclosure.”

Waitling also says that these geoglyphs challenge the current narrative that the Amazonian rainforest has always been untouched.

She stated:

“The fact that these sites lay hidden for centuries beneath mature rainforest really challenges the idea that Amazonian forests are ‘pristine ecosystems.’ We immediately wanted to know whether the region was already forested when the geoglyphs were built, and to what extent people impacted the landscape to build these earthworks.”

Waitling and her team were able to recreate the forestation in the area for the past 6,000 years using advanced technology and have found that the area was cleared and altered significantly to make way for presence of these geoglyphs.

The team does not think that ancient inhabitants simply cleared the way for the sites by burning or chopping down trees, but may have cleared them according to the most economically valuable.

This way, they could both make way for their new sites and make money trading with nearby villages and tribes by selling off their most wanted vegetation.

At the moment, they are still unsure what exactly the geoglyphs represent, but they do not think they were located at the sites of permanent villages.