A new study by British archaeologists shows that the southern part of the Amazon basin, which was believed to have been uninhabited before Columbus arrived, could in fact be home to a million people.

This discovery was made by a group of archaeologists from the University of Exeter who used satellite imagery to survey the Upper Basin of the Tapaya River in Brazil, writes NV citing Science Alert.

They managed to open at least 81 new archaeological site. In particular, the team found evidence of the existence of numerous fortified villages dating from 1250-1500 AD. Scientists have discovered ceramics, polished stone axes, traces of fertilized soil and landfills.

"There is a common misconception that the Amazon is an untouched landscape inhabited by scattered nomadic communities. This is not true. We found that some populations far from major rivers are much larger than previously thought, and these people have affected the environment, and we still can find their tracks today, "says one of the archaeologists, Jonas Gregorio de Souza.

In addition to the enormous scale of some of these long-hidden structures, it is surprising to mention the fact that the researchers have long considered the Tapaya River basin uninhabited. They always assumed that the population is centered around resource-rich floodplains and river banks in other parts of the Amazon.

"Excavations have never been carried out here before, and our study shows that we need to completely reconsider the history of the Amazon region.

Only in the small part that we studied, lived at least several tens of thousands of people, "said Jose Iriarte of the University of Exeter.

In total, in the south of the Amazon, as shown by the estimates of Iriarte and his colleagues, there were approximately 1.3 thousand similar settlements of ancient Indians. They were distributed over an area of ??about 400,000 square kilometers. According to scientists, the total number of inhabitants of these settlements could range from 500 000 to 1 million people.