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There's a book 'the lost city of z' about the search for cities in the amazon. Apparently the first spanish down the river encountered cities that took days to drift by. The rafters ran out of food and stole. There were big barrels of alcohol beverage. The spaniards were in pretty bad shape when they reached the ocean so everyone thought they were howling mad.
There's actual evidence now, miles long canals and straight roads, berms. Also hills that are actually piles of broken ceramic shards. A few pieces I've seen photographed were high fired and had lovely brushstrokes in the glaze.
One theory is that first raft trip brought smallpox or another western disease which dynamited the entire place. Similar journeys a few decades later went looking for the cities and found nothing. Maybe similar to what is documented to have happened on haida gwai.
What is so sad to me is the loss of the culture. Who knows what awesome stuff they could have shared. Stories, food, etc. They were people that looked to have had a lot of leisure time.
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