The Upano Valley sites are a cluster of archaeological sites in the Amazon rainforest. They are located in the Upano River valley in Morona-Santiago Province in eastern Ecuador. The sites comprise several cities; they are believed to have been inhabited as early as 500 BC, predating any other known complex Amazonian society by over a millennium.
LIDAR image revealing the settlements
The Amazon rainforest, also called Amazon jungle or Amazonia, is a moist broadleaf tropical rainforest in the Amazon biome that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. This basin encompasses 7,000,000 km2 (2,700,000 sq mi), of which 5,500,000 km2 (2,100,000 sq mi) are covered by the rainforest. This region includes territory belonging to nine nations and 3,344 formally acknowledged indigenous territories.
Manaus, with 2.2 million inhabitants, is the largest city in the Amazon basin
The Yanomami are a group of approximately 32,000 indigenous people who live in the Amazon rainforest.
Members of an uncontacted tribe encountered in the Brazilian state of Acre in 2009
Ribeirinhos dwellings. Ribeirinhos are a traditional rural non-indigenous population in the Amazon rainforest, who live near rivers