The true treasure lies in discovering who or what created these tunnels. In 2009, a farmer in the south of Brazil was driving through his corn field when he felt his tractor suddenly sink and lurch to one side, making the vehicle shudder to a halt. When researchers arrived to investigate, they were shocked to find a tunnel running across the field and directly under the farmer's house, with deep claw marks embedded into the walls indicating its previous occupant was not human. A geologist and one of the scientists who visited the farmer's property concluded was the work of a giant ground.
Do you know, there is the only city in the world with a 32-story cemetery, what is the real story behind
this unique work? The world's population is growing rapidly. Not only is there
a shortage of housing for the living, but it is also becoming increasingly
difficult to find a suitable eternal resting place after death.
The number of deaths in the
world is also increasing rapidly and it is time that there is no place to bury
in the cemetery. Peoples look the best place to bury their beloved ones.
However, finding space is really difficult in some of the world cities.
These days, high-rise
cemeteries are becoming rapidly popular around the world, and the Memorial
Necrópole Ecumênica, in Santos, Brazil, is the highest of them all. In some
societies, corpses are cremated and buried, while in the divine religions the
dead are buried. Graves and land are dwindling due to population growth.
To overcome this problem,
in some countries the practice of making cemeteries in the form of buildings
instead of ground cemeteries is on the rise. Due to the availability of land
for graves and the proportion of the population, construction of a high-rise
building began in 1983 in the Brazilian city of Santos, which has now become
the tallest cemetery in the world and is listed in the Guinness World Records.
This beautiful 32-story building at the foot of a mountain is 108 meters high. The building name is
Memorial Necropolis Echomanica. It also has a beautiful lawn, parking lot, a
church, a garden, a waterfall, and a restaurant. There are several blocks on 32
floors and each block has 150 tombs.
In addition, there are six
tombs in each storey. This lofty cemetery can accommodate 25,000 corpses at a
time. Here the bodies are kept on rent for three years and after three years
the remains are handed over to the heirs so that they can be buried or disposed
of elsewhere. There are proper ventilation arrangements to keep the graves
cool.
Moreover, the interesting fact is that the higher the tomb, the higher
the price? The building has become a major tourist attraction in Brazil and
millions of tourists come here to see the sights. However, the burial of
corpses is becoming a serious problem for the living people living in the world
because the world is just a cabin and we have to go to our final resting place
anywhere. Death is inevitable, it is a hard fact of life to accept it, no
matter it is easy or uncomfortable. Every human has to embrace death one day.
Termites are tiny insects about
the size of an ant. They live in colonies that may contain 2 million relatives.
Despite their small size they are extraordinary builders.In the seasonally dry, deciduous forests of
northeastern Brazil, obscured by walls of thorny-scrubs, is a vast landscape
made up of tens of millions of densely packed earthen mounds. The findings
suggest that the over-dispersed spatial mound pattern isn’t generated by
aggressive interactions.
The cone-shaped are not nests,
actually piles of dirt each measuring 30ft wide at its base and twice as tall
as a grown man. Which are waste earths excavated by the termites when they
burrow tunnels under the soil. It’s unbelievable that finding an unknown
biological wonder of this sheer size and age still existing. There are lots of
different kinds of termite mounds. Some of them actually keep the termites
cool during the day, and a little bit warmer at night.
Investigators approximation that
these are more than 200 million mounds. These are covering a huge region approximately
equal to the size of Great Britain. The amount of soil excavated is over 10
cubic KM, comparable to the volume of great pyramids of Giza. The
still-inhabited mounds are up to 4,000 years old and so tall they can be seen
via satellite.
Therefore, this makes them the largest
engineering project by any animal besides humans. Unbelievably, some of these
mounds are as old as the Egypt Pyramids themselves. These mounds are remains mainly
hidden from view in the deciduous, semiarid, thorny-scrub caatinga forests exclusive
to this part of Brazil. The locals call them “murundus” but not too much people
outside of the region have heard about it. It was only in recent decades when
some of the lands were cleared for pasture that outsiders have come to discover
them.
Roy Funch, from the State
University of Feira de Santana, first saw these fields of mounds in the 1980s
when he arrived in Brazil as a Peace Corps volunteer. A pheromone map might
allow the termites to minimize their travel time from any location in the colony
to the nearest waste mound.
Investigators have found that
this colossal feat of engineering is the work of a tiny species of termite
called Syntermes dirus, barely half an inch long. These creatures have been
building this landscape for the past four thousand years, and they are still
present in the soil surrounding the mounds. Soil samples collected from the
centers of 11 mounds and dated youngest mound is about 690 years old, while the
oldest was at least 3,820 years old.
These mounds discarded earth,
have no internal structures save for a single large central tunnel descending
into the ground to meet a widespread network of underground tunnels and thin
horizontal galleries where the termites store harvested food. In the night, the
termite workers and soldiers emerge from their underground nest and onto the
forest floor through small temporary tunnels excavated between the mounds.
After their work is done, they return back to the nests and seal the tunnels
shut.
There are many questions still to
chase. How termite colonies are physically structured because a queen chamber
of the species has never been found. Some reports say the mounds can be viewed
from space. They can be easily viewed on open source satellite images,
including Google Earth.
Mount Roraima is also known as
Tepuy Roraima and Cerro Roraima; is the highest of the Pakaraima chain of tepui
plateaus in South America. A mystic, flat-topped mountain on the
Venezuela-Brazil border that mystified 19th-century explorers and inspired “The
Lost World” novel is enticing ever more modern-day adventurers. In 1595,
English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh first described during his expedition. Once
impenetrable to all but the Pemon indigenous people, thousands of hikers a year
now make the trek across savannah, through rivers, under a waterfall and along
a narrow path scaling the cliffs of Mount Roraima. Its 31 km2 summit area is
bounded on all sides by cliffs rising 400 metres. The mountain also serves as
the triple border point of Venezuela (85% of its territory), Guyana (10%) and
Brazil (5%). The throngs are a boon to Venezuela's tottering tourism industry;
they also scatter a prehistoric landscape with unwanted litter and strain a
delicate ecosystem. Mount Roraima lies on the Guiana Shield in the southeastern
corner of Venezuela's forming the highest peak of Guyana's Highland Range.
Mount Roraima Top Park is considered some of the oldest geological formations
on Earth, as much as two billion years ago in the Precambrian. It's an exotic,
faraway destination so it's both very costly and very attractive, have the
peaceful aura appropriate to one of the Earth's most ancient formations.
Although the steep sides of the
plateau make it difficult to access, it was the first recorded major tepui to
be climbed: Sir Everard im Thurn walked up a forested ramp in December 1884 to
scale the plateau. This is the same route hikers take nowadays. The only
non-technical route to the top is the Paraitepui route from Venezuela; any
other approach will involve climbing gear. The highest point in Guyana and the
highest point of the Brazilian state of Roraima lie on the plateau, but
Venezuela and Brazil have higher mountains elsewhere. Mount Roraima, a natural
border between three South American countries, offer such breathtaking views
that they might just stick with you forever and ever down in some rusty memory
box. This spot is about unconventional traveling ideas, a place where people
can find unworldly landscapes and a new way of seeing things. And this is
definitely one of them. Moreover, almost daily rains have also created an exclusive
ecosystem which includes a number of endemic species, black frogs, dragonflies,
tarantulas and such as a unique carnivorous pitcher plant, clinging to cracks
and crevasses and some of the highest waterfalls in the world.
Mount Roraima was considered a
symbol of these regions, an “axis mundi”, a massive tree within which all the
vegetables and fruits of the world grow, tall cliff a place of mystery, myths
for indigenous people used to live here from many centuries. Though, hiking is
not hard here, can seek help from local peoples against some money. Mount
Roraima is said to have some of the most captivating hiking trails in the
world. This remote landscape of jungle and cliffs has inspired the
dinosaur infested landscapes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Lost World, and the dramatic waterfalls dubbed
“Paradise Falls” in the 2009 Pixar film Up. As the time progresses,
Mount Roraima is getting popular among tourist, an average 3,000 and 4,000
people are climbing each year, up from hundreds a few years ago. That makes queues
during peak times, and sometimes leaves the few sheltered coves at the top
crammed with tents. On Mount Roraima's vast plateau strange & gnarled rocks
formed when the African and American continents scraped apart, play with the
mind, humorous in the sun, ghostly in the mist.
Researchers has found hundreds of
mysterious structures built into the Earth more than two thousand years ago
have been discovered in the Amazon rainforest. The truly incredible earthworks
have long remained hidden by trees however; deforestation in recent years has
discovered over 450 massive geoglyphs. Though, the purpose of stone structure
is not known, but believed ditched enclosures were perhaps used sporadically as
ritual gathering places. These ditches resemble to Stonehenge approximately
13,000 square kilometers in the western Brazilian Amazon, thought untouched as
previously believed.
The real phenomena lay hidden for
many centuries underneath mature rainforest actually challenges the idea that
Amazonian forests are pristine ecosystem. The region actually forested when the
geoglyphs were built, or people impacted the landscape to build these
earthworks. Therefore, the researchers reconstructed 6,000 years of vegetation
and fire history around two of the geoglyph sites, enlightening heavy
alterations by ancient humans. The history tells that humans altered the bamboo
forests for millennia, creating small, temporary clearings to build these
mysterious structures. The analyzed “phytoliths” a type of microscopic plant
fossil made of silica.
So, this allowed them to rebuild
the ancient vegetation and charcoal quantities, assess the amount of forest
burning and carbon stable isotopes, and determine how ‘open’ the vegetation
used to be. Moreover, the search exposed that the indigenous people didn’t burn
large tracts of forest, whether for geoglyph construction or agricultural
practices. In its place, they concentrated on economically valuable tree
species, such as palms, transforming their environment in the process to make a
“prehistoric supermarket.” Thus, the biodiversity of few Acre’s remaining
forests may have roots in these ancient ‘agroforestry’ practices, the
researchers say.
So, hence the findings will be
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Regardless of
the massive number and bulk of geoglyph sites in the region, it can certain
that Acre’s forests were never cleared as broadly, or for as long, as they have
been in recent years. The current evidence that Amazonian forests have been
managed by indigenous peoples long before European contact should not be cited
as justification for the destructive, unmaintainable land-use practiced today.
Moreover it should in its place serve to highlight the ingenuity of past
subsistence regimes that did not lead to forest degradation, and the importance
of indigenous knowledge for finding more sustainable land-use alternatives.
Snake Island is also known as “Ilha da Queimada Grande”, is a small island located 18 nautical miles off the coast of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The moderate climate island has several types of terrain, ranging from bare rock to rainforest. The Snake Island area is 110 acres and elevation is almost 676 feet above sea level. The island has variety of vegetation, partly covered in rainforest and partly bare rock and greasy cleared areas. The tiny island has been isolated from the mainland of South America about 100,000 years ago. In fact across rough seas, it is extremely difficult and dangerous place to visit.
Moreover, the word “Queimada” means to slash and burn because when locals attempted to clear land for a banana plantation on the island, they had to clear rainforest using this technique. Queimada Grande is home to hundreds of thousands of golden lanceheads, normally grows to be about two to four feet long is poisonous, extremely very, very poisonous. An automated lighthouse was built in 1909 in order to ships steer away from island. Due to excess number of snakes and toxicity of their venom, the Island was closed for public in order to safe people life by Brazilian Navy. Only researchers are allowed to enter the island to get research data. The scariest chemical analysis of golden lancehead venom advises that the snake is much more hazardous than its continental cousins: “golden lancehead viper” venom is faster acting and more powerful maybe five times more powerful.
The golden lancehead (Bothrops insularis) is the species of snake which gives the island its unofficial name, is the only home of the critically endangered, venomous golden lancehead pit viper, which has a diet of birds. When the sea level rise, the snakes becomes trapped at the mainland covered up the land, result in drop the population to about 2100. However, last year (2015) an estimate by a herpetologist on Discovery Channel documentary states that the population falls in 2000 to 4000 golden lanceheads. Hence, low population of Golden Lancehead list in label of critically endangered on the IUCN Red list of Threatened Species, and also in the list of Brazilian endangered animals. Moreover “Bothrops insularis” is also at risk from inbreeding, effects of which are evident in the population. Hence, it is estimated that island live between 1 to 5 snakes per square meter, is also home to many migratory birds use as a resting point.
A biologist Marcelo Duarte, has visited the Snake Island more than 20 times, says that the local negate the fact of one to five snakes per square meter, a clearly exaggeration at least not by us. It is easily observe one snake per square meter is more like it. Therefore, you’re never more than three feet away from death. According to different stories, this is perhaps the land of long buried pirate treasure, or even aliens island. The only prominent feature of Snake Island may be the perfect place for an anti-cancer drug, or anti-aging medicines. Moreover there are blue locusts and a lot of these weird, prehistoric-looking cockroaches on the ground at night that it crunches when walk. This is extremely scariest place in the world and no one is recommended don’t ever go.
In the midst of the rolling sand
dunes of a national park in Brazil, a wonderful transformation takes place every
year. However, in the rainy season, the valleys landscapes transformed are
filled with crystal-clear turquoise lagoons & the result is simply magnificent,
which you can imagine by seeing these stunning photographs.Therefore, the un-spoilt heaven is located in
Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, offering explorers with a striking backdrop
to escape to though enjoying a respite from the heat.
Moreover, in the peak season
around July these tranquil pools can reach ten feet in depth and are astonishingly
warm to swim in reaching up to 30 degrees C. Therefore, it is stretching for miles and
miles, the picture-perfect landscape look like a desert, but this can't
officially be categorized as one, due to the 47 inches of rain it receives each
year. Thus, almost no vegetation grows in this area, but the aqua phenomenon
provides a brief chance for life to arrive in the area. Interconnecting lagoons combine with neighboring
rivers, opening up channels for fish to see the sights of lovely pools.Furthermore, the experience is short-lived,
as once the dry season returns, the vividly-blue lakes disappear without a
trace.
Well, if you want travel this
part of world, it is highly recommended to have visited to see the true beauty of
sand dunes. However, it is highly
suggested for visitors to witness the natural spectacle is between July and
September, when the mirage-like ponds have formed. In addition, park's website acclaims
around two full days are required to explore the biggest lagoons in the park,
Azul and Bonita and recommend only guided tours are undertaken in the area. So, access is not very difficult and easiest
from the town of Barreirinhas near Maranhão, with Jeeps being the best form of
transport to handle the hilly terrain. Source: Charismatic Planet
