[fermisea]

When it comes to the Americas, the entropy of the entire field of Archaeology is way too high.

Up until 5 years believing that humans were there more than 12k years ago was heresy. Today 30k is the accepted number, while some people are pushing it past 60k.

The belief that there were "civilisations" in the Amazon was also heresy, but now with LiDAR and deforestationthere's megalopolis being found that probably predate both the Andean and Mesoamerican cultures. There's also a set of anthropological elements connecting Andean and Mesoamerican cultures that seem to have their elements in the Amazon - like they share the same origin stories, a very similar god, etc

Anyway, Hancock is a a bit of a crackpot, but he's probably less wrong than everybody else, because we only have access about 1% of all the stuff that can be found in the Amazon, whatever written records that existed from Mayans and Aztecs was destroyed by the Spanish, and every single piece of new evidence seems to point in the direction that there were large organised cities in the Amazon