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So why have so many people gotten the Amazon so wrong for so long?
那么为何会有这么多人误解了亚马逊这么久、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.
在奥雷亚纳的南美探险之后的几百年间，葡萄牙人开始在亚马逊流域的中心地带建立殖民地和开采资源，这些举动让此地的人口大幅减少。
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，欧洲人带来的天花和其他疾病，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.
而抢夺奴隶的做法，也把幸存下来的大部分人逼往内陆偏远地区，等于把定居的农耕者变成了居无定所的狩猎采集者。
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世纪第一批欧洲博物学家抵达时，他们发现大片茂密的丛林植被，而且人烟稀少，于是假设这里一直以来都是如此。
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剧减，卡瓦哈尔笔下的用木头和稻草建造的大型定居点（亚马逊地区没有足够的岩石用于砌筑），老早就在潮湿的热带环境中朽烂了。
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.
博物学家把大型的人造土堆标记成自然地形构造，而且把这片区域惊人的语言数量，归因于从南美大陆各处相继涌入这座雨林的移民。
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世纪末叶，种植橡胶热潮的极盛时期，同时也是极端暴力对待原住民的时期，人类学家甚至把原住民社会错误地描绘成狩猎采集者的后代，说他们是居无定所的小群体。
That picture consolidated during the 20th century and still shapes the image that many outsiders have about the Indigenous history of the Amazon.
这种描绘在20世纪逐渐定型，如今仍然左右着许多外人对亚马逊原住民历史的印象。
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.
这正是20世纪80年代我大学毕业时的主流观点，但后来我认识了两位美国人类学家，他们在亚马逊流域东部和原住民群体一起工作。
Darrell Posey told me how he'd documented the Kayapó planting "forest islands" in savanna areas as they hunted and collected fruits and nuts.
达瑞尔·波西告诉我他记录了卡亚波人一边打猎、采集果实与坚果，一边在莽原地区栽种出“森林岛”。
William Balée described how the Ka'apor used fire to foster the growth of palm groves.
威廉·巴雷则描述卡波人如何用火促进棕榈树丛生长。
Both groups were clearly engineering their landscape to suit their needs.
这两个群体显然都在按照自己的需求改造他们的地貌。
This idea led me into a career looking for new answers about the history of the Amazon.
这个想法引领我走上为亚马逊历史寻找新答案的生涯。
Nearly four decades later, researchers have uncovered an overwhelming body of new evidence. The trees tell us part of the story.
将近40年之后，学者已经发现非常大量的新证据。树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.
我们调查亚马逊雨林之后，发现半数的树木都属于299个物种。
These so-called hyperdominant species are especially useful to humans -- including acai, rubber, Brazil nut, and cacao.
这些所谓的超优势树种包括阿萨伊棕榈、巴西橡胶树、巴西栗和可可树，对人类来说特别有用。
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.
我们在前哥伦布时期的考古遗址附近，往往会发现这些树种大量生长，显示原住民长久以来一直在管理亚马逊河流域的森林。
But it wasn't just the trees that the early Amazonians were curating; it was the soil too.
然而早期亚马逊居民管理的不只是树木，还有土壤。
Beginning in the 1970s, scholars argued that the "Amazon was a counterfeit paradise."
从20世纪70年代开始，就有学者主张“亚马逊是假天堂”。
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.
尽管有茂密的丛林，但土壤过酸，缺乏集约农业必需的养分，也因此无法生产充足的粮食，养活庞大又集中的人口。
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.
但科学家注意到，原住民会在他们称为terra preta（黑土）的小片土地上栽种作物，这种土壤混合了木炭和有机质，通常还掺杂着陶器碎片。
Not only are such spots highly fertile, but they can remain so for centuries, with little or no fertilizer added.
这样的土壤不但非常肥沃，还能维持好几百年，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.
考古学家在整个亚马逊流域都曾发现黑土，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?
不过，卡尔瓦哈和其他早期欧洲人描述的那些亚马逊城镇又是怎么回事呢？
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，我的同事迈克尔·赫肯伯格还因为提出亚马逊流域曾有普遍的都市生活而遭受批评。
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.
但后来有了激光雷达（一种雷射扫描系统），可让我们穿透浓密的雨林冠层，看到早期社会如何塑造这片土地。
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年我在玻利维亚工作时，几位同事就是利用激光雷达，测绘出属于卡萨拉贝文化（约公元500年到1400年左右）的复杂城市住区。
The settlements were linked to each other by causeways several miles long and included canals and reservoirs and earthen pyramids.
这些城市住区之间有数公里长的堤道相通，而且拥有运河、水库和土造金字塔。
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.
激光雷达显示出整片亚马逊流域约有1000个错综复杂的大型聚落，成功重写了亚马逊的历史，并让我们看到不是只有单一的亚马逊文化，而是有许多个，就像在欧洲和亚洲一样。
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.
现在我的工作有一部分的经费是由国家地理学会提供的，工作的重点是要和原住民社群合作，用激光雷达勘测他们的土地，尤其是在森林已遭大面积砍伐或目前受威胁的区域附近。
By finding archaeological sites, we're able to apply for stricter protections from the Brazilian government.
只要找到考古遗址，我们就能向巴西政府申请更周密的保护。
The hope is to use archaeology to build a firewall around the rainforest.
我们希望用考古学在雨林周围筑起一道防火墙。
