An anthropologist from the University of Vermont, having taken up residence among the Indians, has found 20 pre-Columban settlements of enormous size in hill clearings in the jungle. These, made not of stone but of earth and wood, with pallisades and defensive ditches a mile in diameter, date back to the Dark Ages and had populations of up to 5,000 inhabitants. Other, even older, settlements, have yielded pottery 2,000 years older than anything so far found in the Americas, all of which suggests that in the Mato Grosso there was an original civilisation that spread outwards.

The Colonel was right all along, which makes it even sadder.

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