When Europeans first arrived in the tropical regions of Asia, Africa, and the United States, the «declined cities» in the jungle made them think about it.
From «The Lost City of Z» to «El Dorado» (El Dorado), the desire to find ancient civilizations and treasures in dangerous tropical forests has driven people to carry out countless unfortunate expeditions. This obsession with tropical forest cities has infiltrated popular concepts in Western society. In countless movies, novels, and computer games, most of them use overgrown ruins as an environmental background for fear, exploration, and deadly challenges.
In these works, there is a notion that all ancient cities and countries in tropical forests are doomed to perish. Because the most resilient parts of tropical forests are those villages where hunter-gatherers live. And those poisonous vines and towering trees, or the noisy group of monkeys in «The Jungle Book», will ruthlessly obliterate human achievements in the suffocating green.
This view is endorsed by many books and movies, which focus on the decline and fall of some mysterious societies, such as the ancient Maya. Those dilapidated stone walls, empty but magnificent buildings and abandoned streets left behind by tropical cities seem to be a warning: our current lifestyle may not be as safe as imagined.
For a long time, Western scholars have held very similar views on the potential of tropical forests to form ancient cities. On the one hand, intensive agriculture, which is seen as necessary to promote urban development and increase the number of social elites, can hardly develop under the humid, acidic, and poor soil conditions of tropical forests. On the other hand, natural disasters are inevitable in the tropical regions of North America, Central America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia where gravel is everywhere.
As the population grows, people deforestation to build large-scale buildings, and the development of agriculture on barren land has led to frequent natural disasters such as mudslides, floods, and droughts. The challenges faced by tropical cities are also increasing.
It is not easy to completely change these stereotypes. First of all, that kind of large-scale, long-term fieldwork is difficult to conduct in tropical forests. The dense vegetation, malaria-transmitting mosquitoes, highly toxic plants and animals, and heavy rain make the task of exploring and discovering the ancient city centre extremely difficult. Organic materials are used as building materials instead of stones, which exacerbates the burden of this task. Therefore, people’s research progress on tropical ancient cities lags far behind similar research on the civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and East Asian river valleys.
However, many tropical forest societies have found very successful ways of growing food, even under the most challenging conditions, enough to feed a large population and maintain the social structure. In the past 20 years of archaeological exploration, the application of the latest technology on land and air has cleared many obstacles for us and provided newer and more valuable research.
Although the classical Maya society and the Khmer empire of Cambodia were very prosperous at that time, in fact, the tropical city before colonization was the most extensive urban landscape in the world before industrialization, and its degree of prosperity even exceeded the ancient times. Rome, Constantinople (now Istanbul) and some ancient cities in China.
Ancient tropical cities seem to have amazing resilience, and sometimes even exist for centuries longer than the urban network during the industrial colonial period in similar environments. They often suffer multiple obstacles, so they have to constantly transform themselves to cope with the rapidly changing climate and make better use of the surrounding environment. But at the same time, they have also opened up a new model of urban appearance.
These ancient cities are widely distributed and integrated with nature, and their food production and social and political functions are also intertwined. This model has successfully attracted the attention of urban planners in the 21st century, who have begun to try to turn tropical forests into the fastest growing population in the world today.
Just like looking at the term «agriculture», Westerners tend to have a very narrow concept of «city». In their view, cities are densely populated areas, homes for administrative and political elites, where there is bustling trade and manufacturing, and food is provided by vast farmlands and pastures far away from cities.
This view does not seem to apply to cities in tropical forests. There, scattered arable land, pastures and dense settlements will cause rapid forest destruction and soil erosion, which will eventually lead to severe famine and the collapse of the social system. Therefore, if such seemingly “compact” cities appear in tropical regions—for example, the classical Maya in southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and El Salvador—scientists tend to think that these cities exist far away. It exceeds the carrying capacity of tropical forests and will eventually lead to forest degradation and popular rebellion.
The Mayan urban form was formed in about 800 BC. In some major political centres, monument-like stone buildings and writings began to appear. The people are ruled by the king and feed on corn, beans and pumpkins, the main crops of North and Central America. But in the classical period, Mayan society really prospered, especially in the southern lowlands (including northern Guatemala, Belize and southeastern Mexico). Between 250 and 900 AD, as the population continued to grow, more cities, monuments, and inscriptions appeared. Big cities such as Tikal and Calakmul have a population of 120,000.
Although the soils in many of the cities mentioned above are particularly suitable for growing corn, there is a problem that the annual rainfall there is not stable. And due to geological reasons, it is often very challenging to obtain or store precious water resources during the drought months.
Many scholars believe that at the end of the classical period between 800 and 900 AD, the large-scale drought that occurred in the southern lowlands nearly collapsed the ecosystem there. From this point of view, many big cities and their political classes have obviously gone overboard. They cut down trees to build monuments and planted large areas of corn on barren land. People living on the land that has been transformed beyond recognition is already in jeopardy, and when the drought comes, they are even more powerless. As a result, people no longer trust the social elites, construction was forced to end, famine followed one after another, and the people of the classical period began to go into exile.
The story of the classical Maya has been circulating for a long time. But what is shocking is that even in the famous Mayan central cities Copán and Tikal, the population is relatively scattered. In terms of urban planning, unlike the pattern of cultivated land in the inner political centre and outer ring, the farmland in the Mayan cities is very scattered. They also do not focus on a certain place and spread radially outwards. A recent study showed that Tikal is a city network composed of moats, residential areas, reservoirs and pyramids, extending from a small hill to a distance of 200 kilometres.
The groundbreaking aerial survey also made similar discoveries. In almost all samples, what the scientists observed was not a prototype of a city, but a system of scattered agricultural landscapes, residential areas, causeways, complex and interconnected dams, reservoirs, sinkholes, channels, and wetlands. , Large and small as a whole, even in the driest season, these facilities can maintain population growth.
As Lisa Lucero, an authoritative professor of Maya studies at the University of Illinois, said: “The classical Maya knew the importance of water and fertile soil. The fertile soil was distributed in different areas, large and small. , So farming locations are also scattered. This kind of low-density urban planning seems to be a very reasonable and innovative solution.»
The economy of the Classical Maya is also more diverse and complex than people usually think. Archaeological botanists say that in addition to the main crops, the cultivation of avocados, pineapples, sunflowers, tomatoes and cassava has also increased the dispersion of settlements and people’s lifestyles. The classical Maya also kept wild turkeys and deer in captivity to obtain animal protein.
Scientists have proved that it is a variety of «forest gardens» that support the development of these cities. Based on the ethnographic records and research of Mayan society, we found that this farming method called milpa (milpa, Kol in Yucatek) involved the planting of multiple crops and the migration of cultivated land, which allowed the land to rest. Adjustment.
We also found that the classical Maya did not develop agriculture indiscriminately, but chose fertile areas for farming, which made their farmland system look winding and winding along rivers and hillsides. They even began to plant special plants in the reservoir, such as water lilies. These plants are very sensitive to water quality and can only survive in clean water, which requires people to constantly monitor the changes in water quality to prevent the spread of diseases.
It is very difficult to maintain a large population in tropical regions with strong seasonality because there is often a shortage of water, which has caused heavy losses to many parts of the Mayan «heartland».
Detailed studies by climate scientists have shown that from about 800 AD, droughts began to become more frequent. Some studies have also shown that in hundreds of Mayan urban centres, the deforestation situation is different, which also exacerbated the shortage of water resources to varying degrees. In the southern lowlands, it is difficult to find surface water even when the situation is at its best. In many cities, including Tikal, the agricultural harvest rate has been declining year after year, and hunger and survival pressure have increased.
With the increasingly scarce resources, violent incidents between cities began to occur frequently. The kings claimed to have a close connection with the gods, but in the case of drought and crop failures, their sources of political power were often questioned. People gradually discovered that the construction of pyramids and palaces would not bring them any additional income, and they would go on strike. The ritual centre became ruins and was abandoned in the southern Mayan lowlands, waiting for the arrival of scientists centuries later.
This seems undoubtedly a swift and complete disaster. But the facts are more complicated. Given their long-term understanding of ecosystems, coordinated economy, and water management (which are often lacking in urban system planning in the 21st century), is it really possible for a large-scale disaster to occur?
In fact, Mayan cities like Chichén Itzá, which prospered into the post-classical period (900 to 1520 AD), even witnessed the birth of Spain. People have discovered new sources of freshwater, such as sinkholes, lakes and rivers. In many areas, independent farmers were a key part of the classical Mayan urban system, although their numbers were scarce. In the El Pilar area of Tikal’s ceremonial centre, the agricultural community managed the forest garden and witnessed the rise and fall of Tikal.
This diversified agriculture still exists in the Mayan indigenous groups and still occupies large tracts of land in the area today. These groups are engaged in traditional manufacturing and landscape management. Just like our society today, urban archaeologists tend to pay attention to the more eye-catching ruins. When tropical cities are built on a huge network of independent farmers and handicraftsmen, the extraordinary resilience inherent in the foundation of the system is ignored.
Perhaps the most famous of these relics is the Greater Angkor area in Cambodia, where a large number of tourists flock to the Angkor Wat temples every year. In the 12th century AD, it was the religious centre of the Khmer Empire. However, few people realize that this magnificent temple is only a small part of the once huge society.
Around 1000 BC, urban settlements began to appear in this area. By the 9th century AD, Yaśodharapura, the new capital of the Khmer Empire on mainland Southeast Asia, was formed in the Angkor region. There are large reservoirs, a series of walled administrative palaces, and Buddhist and Hindu temples that flourished until the 14th century. For a long time, archaeologists have focused their attention on the impressive and dense ritual centres such as Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat.
But then two things happened. First of all, since the 1990s, French archaeologist Christophe Pottier and his local collaborators have conducted field surveys for decades and summarized many large and small areas in the entire Greater Angkor region. Small architectural features.
Later, a new research method appeared: light detection and radar ranging. Damian Evans (Damian Evans) is one of the main experts in applying this method to tropical archaeology. He said: «Lidar allows us to eliminate interference factors such as vegetation. Through a laser attached to an aeroplane, The scanner scans the terrain with laser pulses and collects billions of points. Some laser beams will be reflected by trees, but others will pass through branches. Then we can model and understand what is under the vegetation.»
What they found in Angkor is simply incredible: a residential area of more than 1,000 square kilometres has appeared beside 3,000 square kilometres of a transformed landscape. This makes Angkor the largest human settlement on the earth before the industrial age, even larger than today’s cities such as Paris. It completely subverts our understanding of how this ancient metropolis works.
Like the vast urban settlement landscapes of the classical Maya, they are not just composed of dense ritual centres. Angkor Wat is another stark example of low-density urban expansion. Radar sweeps across the spacious courtyard of the Angkor Wat Ceremony Center, showing that people once lived in wooden pile houses inside stone walls. Countless huge mounds, small shrines and rice fields stretched upward from the border of the Angkor Wat ruins, crossed the lowlands, and sank into the mountains.
Residents of Angkor Thom know how to use the vast tropical forests and fields to pick palms, vegetables and fruits in orchards, and retain a certain area of forest cover. They raise fish in rivers and ponds and raise pigs, cows and chickens on busy streets.
Studies have shown that in order to support the ever-increasing population and animal numbers, people have established a huge water transportation network and storage system with tributaries. Unsurprisingly, this huge city does put pressure on the tropical landscape. There is clear evidence that forests have been deforested and soils have been eroded in many places, although these effects are relatively scattered.
The Angkor era finally came to an end. In the late 14th century AD, the increasingly extreme climate change between drought and flood destroyed most of the water network and severely affected agricultural production. In urban areas, people walked out of palaces and temples because independent farmers felt that they had no reason to stay under the umbrella of political elites.
However, the city did not fall apart. What happened next was more interesting. The rulers moved the capital to the new city of Phnom Penh. At the same time, farmers moved to small towns along the Mekong River and Tonlé Sap Lake, where there is a more stable supply of water.
Like the classical Maya, the Angkor ruling system eventually failed, not to mention that it was still in an area with large seasonal changes in rainfall and severe climate. But the Angkor elites believed that they should not compromise on this. They came up with a new strategy-transfer the centre of power, while the farmers were left on the land that had long provided food for the rulers, even though they were also trying to find Areas more suitable for farming and grazing.
Once we pass through the overgrown walls of the temple, a huge, highly-reduced urban life system represented by the Great Angkor appears before our eyes.
Compared with the tropical forests in Cambodia where seasonal droughts occur frequently, the tropical rain forests in the Amazon Basin are another challenge facing urban society. In fact, some archaeologists and anthropologists believe that it is almost impossible to build cities and develop agriculture on hot, humid, and acidic (and often submerged) land. After all, there are only a few scattered indigenous villages in the tropical rainforest, and there is no obvious social hierarchy. In other words, all the activities we are doing today to expand infrastructure and develop agriculture and animal husbandry will cause immeasurable harm to the environment.
However, more and more specialized groups composed of archaeologists, anthropologists, environmental scientists and indigenous communities have conducted research on this, showing us a large number of garden city landscapes, such as earthwork, cluster structures and roads in the Amazon.
In the Xingu River and its surrounding areas, the number of settlements peaked between 1250 and 1650 AD, just before the Europeans arrived. Interestingly, their model is very similar to the urban form of the classical Maya and the Greater Angkor region, which is based on agriculture and low-density urbanization.
In almost every case, the large town in the centre was surrounded by huge wooden walls and ditches, connected to some satellite villages through small roads opened in the forest. These settlements are not subject to large-scale deforestation but are separated by a complete forest belt, which is conducive to better management of orchards, fish farming and freshwater turtles, and a wider field for cassava cultivation. And corn.
Years of research have also documented a series of similar urban settlements on the island of Marajó at the mouth of the Amazon. In the 14th century AD, the population size and density of the area continued to increase. At its peak, the population was as high as 100,000. Analysis of human remains showed that similar to the garden city of Xingu River, residents of Marajo Island and the nearby Maracá (Maracá) area feed on a variety of plants, hunt and fish, use rain forests to store water resources, or in other places. Some cassava and corn are grown in open areas.
In the end, this low-density “Amazonian” urbanization based on agriculture may increase the population of the Amazon region before the arrival of Europeans to 20 million. Given that the population of all of Europe in 1492 was between 70 and 88 million, this means that a considerable number of people have lived in a different urban form from our general concept of cities.
Not all ancient cities in the tropics are as described above. Compared with relatively dense urban forms, they are of course rarer and easier to disappear. However, the above examples provide us with an important way to understand the tropical forests of the past, allowing us to see the possibility of ancient cities appearing there, as well as their amazing creativity. The rational use of wild animals and plants in the forest, fishing in a rich freshwater environment, and mobile planting of crops in open areas, etc., all provided sufficient conditions for the rise of some large cities before the industrial age.
Dispersing the growing population to satellite cities reduces the impact of human activities on tropical biodiversity and soil quality. Of course, the crisis still exists, especially in the seasonally dry forests. Deforestation and the emergence of extreme weather will sharply weaken people’s viability. However, some very tough cities can exist for a long time-Angkor and several classical Mayan cities have lasted for more than 500 years.
The «agriculture-based, low-density urbanization» model is still of great reference for urban planners in tropical regions today. They hope to build a green city to alleviate the conflicts between the urgent need for environmental protection, the construction of political and cultural infrastructure, and the growing urban population.
In the tropics, there are many cities built by former colonial countries and empires. Quite a few of them, such as the Amazon River Basin and the Maya in the post-classical period, were still prospering during their contact with Europeans. They are even often appreciated by European tourists.
So why do we tend to think that tropical forests are not conducive to the fortunes of a large number of people and the high yield of food? Why is it that everyone generally assumes that only ruins and isolated small indigenous tribes are suitable here, rather than downtowns, residential areas and monuments that can stand the test of time? It’s time to rethink.