Amazonian Ancient City

Scientists have discovered an ancient city in Eastern Ecuador using LIDAR. The Light Detection and Ranging technology (LIDAR) was used to map 115 square miles of Ecuador’s Upano Valley, along the foothills of the Andes. They found evidence of a settlement named Sangay, which could have been home to as many as 100,000 people.

 

One scientist remarked that this discovery changed the way to think about Amazonian cultures. Instead of small groups living in huts, at least some of them lived in complicated urban environments.

 

The system discovered at Sangay connected various urban centers. The road are nearly straight and contain right angles, which would be difficult in the Amazonian terrain.

 

We don’t know much about the people, archeologists also detected traces of fields where they likely grew maize, beans, sweet potatoes and cassava. And at the end of a hard day, they probably enjoyed a kind of sweet beer called ‘chicha’.

 

They have dated Sangay to have been active from 500BCE to possibly 600CE. The LIDAR scans have revealed various platforms, plazas, streets, and drains. But one unique aspect of Sangay is the complex road system that extends nearly 6 miles.

 

I am always interested in such discoveries. I’ll be keeping my eyes open for more information about Sangay.

Formatting Manuscripts

Finally, I got some actual instructions from Draft2Digital on how to prepare a manuscript to be uploaded for publication! Their instructions are vastly simpler than what I had to do for Smashwords, but I have made some mistakes that would make the finished ebook come out wonky.

 

For instance, I placed 4 hard returns before each chapter heading, to push it down a nice distance on the page. But now I know that 4 hard returns in a row will be changed to a page break. I don’t want that, because I already put in a page break to get the new chapter to start on a new page. It would wind up with blank pages before each chapter if I don’t go through and remove 3 of those hard returns.

 

I also carefully created a Table of Contents. But their software will create one for me, so I need to yank mine out.

 

There are other places where I’ve got multiple hard returns as I tried to get the front matter somewhat symmetrical. Now I have to spend a few minutes figuring out how to place the front matter pleasingly on the page without using a bunch of hard returns. Because just 2 hard returns in a row will be converted to a section break, which I don’t want cluttering up my title page.

 

There are 60 chapters in the book I’m trying to get published. It will take me 2 or 3 days to go through and straighten those out. Another day to figure out the title page, and time to work on a couple other pages that have a picture involved. And I’m still in the middle of classes that take up far more time than I thought they would. So, it’s beginning to look like this book might not go on sale until August 1.

 

Still, I’m making progress, however slowly.