Part 1

Read the text and answer the questions below.

Buried cities of the Amazon rainforest

A In a letter to his wife sent on 24 May 1925, Percy Fawcett, an English adventurer, reported that he was about to depart without the assistance of guides on an expedition into previously unexplored areas of the Amazon rainforest in central Brazil. His goal was to find a hidden city that he referred to as ‘Z’. It took Fawcett’s last contact with the outside world – he disappeared without a trace – and how he died is still unknown.

B Now, more than 90 years later, archaeologist Michael Heckenberger of the University of Florida in the US and his team, in collaboration with local indigenous people called the Kuikuro, Brazilian scholars, and a group of archaeologists, have discovered the remains of 28 settlements in the Upper Xingu region of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state, the same area where Fawcett disappeared. Fawcett may not have been right about the existence of a city, but the recent discovery of these settlements is helping to overturn the long-held theory that the Amazon rainforest is unsuited to human habitation.

C The Amazon rainforest is home to the world’s richest plant and animal communities. But paradoxically, the soils here are highly acidic and contain few nutrients. About 98 per cent of the rainforest’s nutrients can be found in the soil; the rest are bound up in plants and organic matter. Only plants that are perfectly adapted to draw their nutrients from decaying plant and animal waste can survive in the reddish or yellowish earth that dominates this area.

D But researchers have discovered that some parts of the rainforest contain plots of a man-made fertile soil, known as terra preta (‘black earth’ in Portuguese), which contains elevated levels of nutrients and organic matter perfect for agriculture in areas otherwise unsuitable for it. This soil – a result of refuse piles usually including charcoal, fish bones, pottery fragments, animal bones, clay and excrement – may have provided food for tens of thousands of inhabitants and allowed for the development of large towns and villages.

E This fertile soil is as deep as two metres in fields sometimes as large as 200,000 square metres. Researchers estimate that as much as ten per cent of the Amazon rainforest is covered with it. The fertile pockets are concentrated near riverbanks, and the present-day inhabitants of the rainforest are still making use of it. In addition, they are much more productive than other soil. One of the many mysteries of terra preta is that it does not become depleted, but retains its fertility for many years.

F Most of the plots are between 500 and 2,500 years old, and some researchers suspect that inhabitants of the area created and spread the rich soil intentionally. They theorise that, by exploiting terra preta’s extreme fertility, natives were able to put their previous existence as nomads behind them. Instead, they settled in villages, surrounding themselves with orchards providing fruit and fields providing cereals sufficient to feed a large population.

G Eduardo Neves, an archaeologist at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, has been studying these vanished cultures for 17 years, and from his discoveries in the Amazon rainforest, he is convinced that the rainforest was relatively densely populated between 500 and 1,000 years ago. He suggests that at least four million people may have lived in the rainforest during that period.

H Settlements comprised over 1000 people, Neves believes, yet the inhabitants left no mark on the archaeological record in the form of buildings. In a region where stone was not accessible, they could only have constructed their homes and temples from wood, and as a result, the buildings would have long rotted in the humid tropical climate. Yet in more than 100 locations in the region where the Rio Xingu flows into the Amazon, Neves has found other signs of long-lost cultures. Among the finds are ceramic objects, pots and huge reservoirs with a hold more than 185 litres. According to Neves, people who lived as nomads in the rainforest would have neither made nor attempted to travel with such large containers. So it is likely these containers were for water in the places where people settled permanently.

I The first European to explore the Rio Xingu region was the Spaniard Francisco de Orellana, who, in 1542, reported seeing large settlements on the riverbanks. Expeditions entering the Amazon rainforest in the 1800s found no evidence of the settlements that Orellana had reported and his reports were dismissed as untrustworthy. However, research now indicates that Orellana was probably telling the truth. Heckenberger and his team have combed the rainforest around the upper reaches of Rio Xingu since 1992 and used satellite imagery, have found evidence of 28 settlements. These lie in an area of 20,000 square kilometres, and were once linked by roads. The settlements were all laid out in the same pattern around a plaza, showing evidence of sophisticated planning.

Questions 1–6

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1–6 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE FALSE NOT GIVEN

1 The English adventurer Percy Fawcett ignored advice from local guides.

2 There is now evidence that people lived in settlements in the region where Fawcett went missing.

3 In the Amazonian rainforest the reddish or yellowish soil contains a considerable proportion of nutrients.

4 Terra preta is a type of soil that occurs naturally in the Amazonian rainforest.

5 Terra preta is mostly found close to flowing water.

6 In recent years, the current inhabitants of the Amazonian rainforest have stopped farming the terra preta soil.

Questions 7–13

Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 7–13 on your answer sheet.

Amazonian rainforest study

Agricultural evidence for early human Amazonians

terra preta found in region
terra preta
made from human refuse
its 7 ________ lasts a long time

Theories about Amazonians

inhabitants would have grown 8 ________ and grain to eat.
population of each settlement may have been more than 9 ________.
lack of evidence of buildings due to the humid climate
large vessels found were probably used to keep a supply of 10 ________ available for inhabitants.
earliest European claim of finding villages in Amazonian rainforest made in the year 11 ________.
satellite imagery shows that 12 ________ connected settlements.
each settlement was arranged with a 13 ________ in its centre.