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So why have so many people gotten the Amazon so wrong for so long?
那么為何會有這么多人誤解了亞馬遜這么久、又如此深？
In the centuries that followed Orellana's journey, Portuguese efforts to colonize the heart of the Amazon and extract its resources decimated the populations.
在奧雷亞納的南美探險之后的幾百年間，葡萄牙人開始在亞馬遜流域的中心地帶建立殖民地和開采資源，這些舉動讓此地的人口大幅減少。
Smallpox and other diseases introduced by Europeans are believed to have wiped out upwards of 90 percent of the Native peoples.
一般相信，歐洲人帶來的天花和其他疾病，害死了90%以上的原住民。
And the practice of slave raiding drove most of the survivors into the far reaches of the interior, effectively converting settled farmers into nomadic hunter-gatherers.
而搶奪奴隸的做法，也把幸存下來的大部分人逼往內(nèi)陸偏遠地區(qū)，等于把定居的農(nóng)耕者變成了居無定所的狩獵采集者。
So in the 1700s, when the first European naturalists arrived, they found large areas covered in dense jungle vegetation with few people around and assumed it had always been like this.
因此，在18世紀第一批歐洲博物學家抵達時，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)大片茂密的叢林植被，而且人煙稀少，于是假設這里一直以來都是如此。
Because of this depopulation, the large settlements Carvajal had described, built from wood and straw (there's not enough rock in the Amazon for masonry), had long since rotted away in the wet tropical environment.
由于葡萄牙人造成的人口劇減，卡瓦哈爾筆下的用木頭和稻草建造的大型定居點（亞馬遜地區(qū)沒有足夠的巖石用于砌筑），老早就在潮濕的熱帶環(huán)境中朽爛了。
Large human-made mounds were labeled as natural formations, and the region's staggering number of languages was attributed to successive waves of immigrants that came to the rainforest from elsewhere on the continent.
博物學家把大型的人造土堆標記成自然地形構(gòu)造，而且把這片區(qū)域驚人的語言數(shù)量，歸因于從南美大陸各處相繼涌入這座雨林的移民。
By the late 1800s and the apex of the rubber boom -- a period of extreme violence against Indigenous peoples -- anthropologists were erroneously describing Native societies as small, nomadic groups.
到了19世紀末葉，種植橡膠熱潮的極盛時期，同時也是極端暴力對待原住民的時期，人類學家甚至把原住民社會錯誤地描繪成狩獵采集者的后代，說他們是居無定所的小群體。
That picture consolidated during the 20th century and still shapes the image that many outsiders have about the Indigenous history of the Amazon.
這種描繪在20世紀逐漸定型，如今仍然左右著許多外人對亞馬遜原住民歷史的印象。
This was the prevailing view when I graduated from college in the 1980s, but then I met two American anthropologists working with Indigenous groups in the eastern Amazon.
這正是20世紀80年代我大學畢業(yè)時的主流觀點，但后來我認識了兩位美國人類學家，他們在亞馬遜流域東部和原住民群體一起工作。
Darrell Posey told me how he'd documented the Kayapó planting "forest islands" in savanna areas as they hunted and collected fruits and nuts.
達瑞爾·波西告訴我他記錄了卡亞波人一邊打獵、采集果實與堅果，一邊在莽原地區(qū)栽種出“森林島”。
William Balée described how the Ka'apor used fire to foster the growth of palm groves.
威廉·巴雷則描述卡波人如何用火促進棕櫚樹叢生長。
Both groups were clearly engineering their landscape to suit their needs.
這兩個群體顯然都在按照自己的需求改造他們的地貌。
This idea led me into a career looking for new answers about the history of the Amazon.
這個想法引領我走上為亞馬遜歷史尋找新答案的生涯。
Nearly four decades later, researchers have uncovered an overwhelming body of new evidence. The trees tell us part of the story.
將近40年之后，學者已經(jīng)發(fā)現(xiàn)非常大量的新證據(jù)。樹木透露了一部分的故事。
By surveying the rainforest, we find that half of the Amazon's trees come from only 299 species.
我們調(diào)查亞馬遜雨林之后，發(fā)現(xiàn)半數(shù)的樹木都屬于299個物種。
These so-called hyperdominant species are especially useful to humans -- including acai, rubber, Brazil nut, and cacao.
這些所謂的超優(yōu)勢樹種包括阿薩伊棕櫚、巴西橡膠樹、巴西栗和可可樹，對人類來說特別有用。
We tend to find these trees in abundance near preColumbian archaeological sites, which points to a long-standing practice of Indigenous people curating the Amazon forests.
我們在前哥倫布時期的考古遺址附近，往往會發(fā)現(xiàn)這些樹種大量生長，顯示原住民長久以來一直在管理亞馬遜河流域的森林。
But it wasn't just the trees that the early Amazonians were curating; it was the soil too.
然而早期亞馬遜居民管理的不只是樹木，還有土壤。
Beginning in the 1970s, scholars argued that the "Amazon was a counterfeit paradise."
從20世紀70年代開始，就有學者主張“亞馬遜是假天堂”。
Despite the lush jungle, its highly acidic soils lacked nutrients crucial for intensive agriculture and, therefore, couldn't have yielded enough food to support large, concentrated populations.
盡管有茂密的叢林，但土壤過酸，缺乏集約農(nóng)業(yè)必需的養(yǎng)分，也因此無法生產(chǎn)充足的糧食，養(yǎng)活龐大又集中的人口。
But scientists noticed Indigenous people growing crops on plots of something called terra preta -- dark earth -- which is soil mixed with charcoal and organic matter and often pieces of broken ceramics.
但科學家注意到，原住民會在他們稱為terra preta（黑土）的小片土地上栽種作物，這種土壤混合了木炭和有機質(zhì)，通常還摻雜著陶器碎片。
Not only are such spots highly fertile, but they can remain so for centuries, with little or no fertilizer added.
這樣的土壤不但非常肥沃，還能維持好幾百年，只需要少量肥料，或根本不用施肥。
Archaeologists have found terra preta throughout the Amazon and have dated some as far back as 5,000 years.
考古學家在整個亞馬遜流域都曾發(fā)現(xiàn)黑土，有些黑土的年代甚至可以追溯到5000年前。
But what about the Amazonian cities that Carvajal and other early Europeans described?
不過，卡爾瓦哈和其他早期歐洲人描述的那些亞馬遜城鎮(zhèn)又是怎么回事呢？
As recently as 2008, my colleague Michael Heckenberger was criticized for suggesting that there was widespread urbanism in the Amazon.
一直到2008年，我的同事邁克爾·赫肯伯格還因為提出亞馬遜流域曾有普遍的都市生活而遭受批評。
But then came lidar -- a laser scanning system -- that has allowed us to peer through the dense rainforest canopy and see how early societies shaped the land.
但后來有了激光雷達（一種雷射掃描系統(tǒng)），可讓我們穿透濃密的雨林冠層，看到早期社會如何塑造這片土地。
While I was working in Bolivia in 2019, colleagues were using lidar to map complex urban settlements belonging to the Casarabe culture, which lasted from around A.D. 500 to about 1400.
2019年我在玻利維亞工作時，幾位同事就是利用激光雷達，測繪出屬于卡薩拉貝文化（約公元500年到1400年左右）的復雜城市住區(qū)。
The settlements were linked to each other by causeways several miles long and included canals and reservoirs and earthen pyramids.
這些城市住區(qū)之間有數(shù)公里長的堤道相通，而且擁有運河、水庫和土造金字塔。
Lidar has revealed about a thousand large, intricate settlements throughout the Amazon, effectively rewriting its history and showing us that, as in Europe and Asia, there wasn't a single Amazonian culture but many.
激光雷達顯示出整片亞馬遜流域約有1000個錯綜復雜的大型聚落，成功重寫了亞馬遜的歷史，并讓我們看到不是只有單一的亞馬遜文化，而是有許多個，就像在歐洲和亞洲一樣。
Now my work, partly funded by the National Geographic Society, focuses on partnering with Indigenous communities to do lidar surveys of their land, especially near areas that have been deforested or are threatened.
現(xiàn)在我的工作有一部分的經(jīng)費是由國家地理學會提供的，工作的重點是要和原住民社群合作，用激光雷達勘測他們的土地，尤其是在森林已遭大面積砍伐或目前受威脅的區(qū)域附近。
By finding archaeological sites, we're able to apply for stricter protections from the Brazilian government.
只要找到考古遺址，我們就能向巴西政府申請更周密的保護。
The hope is to use archaeology to build a firewall around the rainforest.
我們希望用考古學在雨林周圍筑起一道防火墻。
