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Upano Valley settlements

Location	Morona-Santiago Province, eastern Andean foothills, Ecuador
Conventional date	About 500 BCE to 300–600 CE (Kilamope and Upano cultures).
Alternative date proposals	None with significant published support that we know of.
What is measured	LiDAR over about 300 km²: more than 6,000 platforms, plazas and long straight roads. [1]

The earliest and among the largest known urban networks in the Amazon, found by combining decades of fieldwork with airborne laser scanning.

Claims about this site

Claim	Status	Verdict
The pre-Columbian Amazon held large, organised societies, not just small bands	Mainstream	Supported by LiDAR and excavation
Upano Valley, Ecuador: the oldest known urban network in the Amazon	Mainstream	Measured: from about 500 BCE

Sources

Rostain, S. et al. (2024). Two thousand years of garden urbanism in the Upper Amazon. Science 383. doi:10.1126/science.adi6317 data

Dates are summarised in our own words from the sources listed. Conventional and alternative dates are both reported; "measured" lists only dated or documented findings. Methodology.