Pyramid structure discovered near Caral Peru

Civilizations rise, fall, and get buried over time, yet traces of them still shape the landscapes we live in today

If you mean visually, there's this: https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/

Not South America, but the story of Moncacht-Apé (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moncacht-Ap%C3%A9) is a fascinating—if slightly dubious—primary source describing his journey across North America immediately prior to European contact. I found a copy of his account as told to a French colonial officer on Amazon, and it looked like it was printed on a laser printer.

Cabeza de Vaca spent 1528–1536 wandering through the Southwest, living with multiple indigenous tribes. His experiences ranged from enslavement to becoming a medicine man. His firsthand account, Naufragios, is available, but I highly recommend A Land So Strange by Andrés Reséndez for a more accessible read. De Vaca also had a second adventure in South America, but it’s not as well-documented.

Another great read is River of Darkness by Buddy Levy, which covers Francisco Orellana’s journey down the Amazon. His expedition was roughly contemporary to Cabeza de Vaca’s own jungle survival story—though Orellana was a bit more conquistadorial than De Vaca.

I’d also love to see a proper follow-up to 1491 (1493 doesn’t count!). The closest thing we have might be America Before by Graham Hancock, which incorporates recent LiDAR discoveries—but it leans more into speculation than hard archaeology.

There is "America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization", from 2019 by Graham Hancock. But while Graham Hancock refers to lots of real research, he also mixes in his own unverified ideas and theories. In that sense, Charles C. Mann is a more serious reporter than Hancock.

I'd be curious about South America as well as North America.

I found Pekka Hämäläinen's Indigenous Continent to be a worthwhile history of North America, although mostly it was focused on events during European exploration of North America with a relatively short initial section about the state of civilization prior to the Spanish arrival.

Most people will not understand how awesome your comment is, and if I could, I would triple vote you up.

I had trouble writing this sentence due to all the laughing. Bravo.

We work on exactly that, in application to ancient Khmer civilization (9th to 15th century). In fact, data is not that sparse, but it's hard to get it. Archaeologists just don't share data as much.

The basic answer is that you have to have at least some data to be able to do anything. We found that in the data regime augmentation works a little bit, transfer learning much less so. What really works is simply sitting down and annotating the data, with on-the-ground surveys and follows ups.

alien fortresses under our nose :)