- Trump biopic hits Cannes Film Festival
- Iran President Raisi's helicopter found, 'no sign of life'
- Three talking points ahead of 2024 French Open
- 'Haikyu!!': Comic heroes fuel Japan Olympic volleyball manga mania
- Timberwolves rally to knock defending champion Nuggets out of NBA playoffs
- London court set to rule on Julian Assange extradition
- Business and Bollywood votes in India election
- Pope calls anti-migrant attitudes at US border 'madness'
- Mexico aims to be big economic winner from US-China tensions
- Uncertain future for thousands after deadly Brazil floods
- Schauffele makes the putt of his life for first major win
- Wirtz returns to help unbeaten Leverkusen chase history
- Search for Iran's President Raisi after helicopter goes missing
- DeChambeau's powerful putting has him excited for US Open
- Taiwan to swear in new president as China pressure grows
- Atalanta can end 61-year wait for trophy in Europa League final
- Schauffele birdies final hole to capture PGA for first major win
- Guardiola casts doubt over long-term Man City future
- Hollywood icons Costner and Demi Moore make Cannes comeback
- Pacers shoot down Knicks to reach NBA Eastern Conference finals
- Schauffele birdies final hole, captures first major at PGA Championship
- McLaughlin powers to Indy 500 pole in all-Penske front row
- Monaco footballer tapes over LGBTQ badge
- Korda wins sixth LPGA title of year with win at Liberty National
- Pacers put on shooting show to down Knicks, reach NBA Eastern Conference finals
- US envoy touts 'potential' of Israel-Saudi deal in Netanyahu talks
- Dominicans vote for president in poll overshadowed by Haiti crisis
- Brest secure Champions League qualification, PSG win without Mbappe
- Mbappe absent as PSG win final Ligue 1 game
- Still exhausted after arrest, Scheffler closes with 64 at PGA
- Brest secure historic Champions League qualification
- France's Macron calls fresh emergency on New Caledonia unrest
- Taiwan swears in new president as China pressure grows
- Schauffele leads as dramatic PGA back-nine battle begins
- Biden faces silent Gaza protest at Martin Luther King Jr's college
- Ten Hag says Man Utd 'must do everything' to win FA Cup after Premier League flop
- Cannes film follows Egypt feminists on brink of adulthood
- Pep Guardiola: Man City manager addicted to winning
- Jackson wins season opener in Marrakesh with all eyes on Paris
- Things get real as imaginary friend flick 'If' tops N.America box office
- Paris seeks to boost sluggish sales for Paralympic Games
- How a French director pulled off Cannes's crazy Mexican narcos hit
- Man City make case to be ranked as England's greatest-ever team
- Hamdy gives Zamalek second CAF Confederation Cup title
- Rome champion Zverev eyes French Open but wary of Djokovic 'at his best'
- Spain recalls its ambassador to Argentina over 'insult'
- Real Sociedad reach Europa League, Cadiz relegated
- Man City's six Premier League titles in seven years 'insane': Guardiola
- Dramatic last-round showdown under way at PGA Championship
- It may take 100 points to stop Man City, says Arsenal boss Arteta
Roads, farming threaten Ecuador 'lost city' complex
Shielded by the jungle for hundreds of years, the remains of a massive 2,500-year-old network of Ecuadoran cities are being threatened by road and farm encroachment just as its long-held secrets are being revealed, researchers say.
Traces of an Amazonian "lost city" were first discovered in 1978, but the full extent of what is now believed to be the largest and oldest such urban expanse were only revealed last year with the help of laser mapping.
The vast site, which covers more than 1,000 square kilometers (385 square miles), lies deep in the Upano valley on the foothills of the Andes mountain range in eastern Ecuador.
It consists of ancient settlements of different sizes, connected by what researchers describe as a complex system of roads.
Archeologists have also identified some 7,400 mounds in various shapes, made by human hands millennia ago.
They stand up to four meters (about 13 feet) tall and five times as wide and are believed to have been the foundations of homes, or communal areas for rituals or festivals.
Some have already been damaged -- wrongly thought by road developers to be natural formations that they could break through.
"There is an urgent need... for a protection plan," said Spanish archeologist Alejandra Sanchez, who has been studying the site for a decade.
Beyond the road construction issue, Sanchez also described the risks posed by erosion, deforestation, and agriculture to the mounds, which she said are "destroyed very easily by rain, wind, plows."
The Upano River, cradle of the Indigenous culture of the same name, is also the victim of voracious mining, both legal and wildcat.
- 'The tip of the iceberg' -
As a first step towards having the site protected, Ecuador's National Institute of Cultural Heritage (INPC) is working on delineating the complex.
The INPC in 2015 started mapping out the area using LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology, bouncing laser light off buildings or trees to measure landscapes.
The data was shared with archeologists in 2021.
Last year, Sanchez and Argentine researcher Rita Alvarez presented their analysis of the images in an INPC publication.
Then in January, a French-led team reported their own findings based on the mapping data in the journal Science -- giving global news coverage to the discovery.
The site was first described by priest and archeologist Pedro Porras in the 1980s, according to the private Catholic University's Weilbauer-Porras museum in Quito, which displays finely decorated red-tinted vessels, and a piece of volcanic rock carved in a half-human, half-animal shape.
It also houses maps and black-and-white photographs of Porras pointing to the mounds protruding from the ground.
According to researchers who have studied the city network since the 1980s, the Upano people who built it had the political, economic, and religious organization typical of great civilizations.
Construction on the mounds is thought to have begun between 500 BC and 300-600 AD -- around the time of the Roman empire.
Other urban sites discovered in the Amazon date from between 500-1,500 AD.
And while Ecuador may once have "envied" the archeological riches of other Latin American nations, the Upano site matches them in "quantity, grandeur, history and cultural expression," archaeologist Alden Yepez of the Catholic University told AFP.
He believes discoveries so far are only "the tip of the iceberg" of an even bigger civilization, and that the site may extend up to 2,000 square km around the Upano, Palora and Pastaza rivers, where there are also signs of settlements.
"The idea that the Amazon was an unpopulated space or only inhabited by nomads has been discarded," said INPC director Catalina Tello.
W.Lapointe--BTB