Llanos de Moxos

The Moxos level (Spanish: Llanos de Moxos, sometimes called " Mojo " is written ) is a 110,000 square kilometer flood savannah in the northern lowlands of Bolivia in Beni. Your name goes back to the indigenous group of Moxo that has settled there in the 17th century.

The plane is not the ideal settlement area, as the soils are poor in nutrients and opened up vast areas of Moxos level during the rainy season months under water.

Excavations

The archaeological excavations at Beni were started in 1908 by the Swede Erland Nordenskiold on three hills south-east of the regional capital of Trinidad, he found va Ceramics. The preliminary results show that it is already in the pre-Columbian period 500-1400 AD has been in the Moxos level a lively settlement activity, so they ended even before the arrival of the Spaniards. In the 1960s, William Denevan from the University of Wisconsin flew over the area and marveled at scale channels, hills and heaped earth walls, which revolutionized the scientific understanding. Because of political instability and drug cultivation that leads to distrust of whites, but this only led to a slight increase of the excavations.

The American geologist Kenneth Lee tried to determine whether and how a culture on the nutrient-poor soils could conduct intensive agriculture from the 1970s. He suspected that the " Hügelbeetanlagen " on the Rio Iruyañez in Santa Ana del Yacuma for breeding dickstieligen water hyacinths were, an extreme weed, but that you could use as fertilizer, this theory applies since the 1990s, however, refuted. From the 1990s under Clark Erickson of the University of Pennsylvania and William Balee long-term excavations are being carried out, the results are largely not yet been published. The Brazilian archaeologist Denise Schaan of the University of Pala in Belem has discovered with their Finnish colleagues Martti Pärssinen with Google Earth so far over 200 round, four -, and triangular grave structures. To what extent one can speak of "high culture" as in the Andean peoples is still very controversial, but in the lowlands were living safely not only hunter-gatherers adopted for how long.

Heiko Prümers the German Archaeological Institute (DAI ) is particularly at two archaeological hills ( " Loma " s ) in the southeast of the district of Beni worked near the village of Casa Raven:

• Loma Mendoza: 50 miles east of Trinidad
• Loma Salvatierra: Prümers discovered here a " prince " grave, the " sub- caciques of Casa Raven ," and many bone artifacts with wide range of functions (tools and equipment, jewelry, musical instruments)