We had several articles last week over the cities in Ecuador's Upano, upstream of the Namangoza. I think this is the Oriente province; across the (two) Andes ranges. So: Amazon watershed, foothills.
Mann's book 1491 claimed - from several not-well-regarded colonial accounts - that the Amazon once had a Neolithic, not the jungle savages (like the "Fierce People", Yanomamö) whom the Portuguese explorers found there. Mann is holding up better and better as these cities keep getting found; the savagery was, basically, Mad Max. Postcivilisational people become savage. And why wouldn't they? They're living among reminders of what they once were. Look at the Merovings' Francia.
Upano's heyday was 500 BC - AD 500s. That is centuries before the crashes of other Amazonian societies. I wonder if some of these guys migrated elsewhere, sparking off successors - not Casarabe (as should be obvious) but something closer home, like Kuhikugu or the Tapajo.
The Turtle wonders further if 500s, more exactly, means the later 530s. If there were soil depletion and/or invasion, one imagines those signals would be visible in the record. Of course the same should hold for drought or cold - perhaps remembered as darkness. As to who might be invading, Muisca seem too late but who knows, the archaeology keeps expanding. The Moche are too coastal to be climbing Andes; the Tairona too northern. I'd worry most about Huari, also starting around this time.
With much work, Ecuador won't fail again.
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