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The scientists, whose findings were published on Thursday in the journal Science, described clusters of towns and smaller villages connected by complex road networks and saddle-cloth a society doomed by the arrival of Europeans five centuries ago.

European colonists and the diseases they brought through them probably killed most of the inhabitants, the researchers said. The settlements, consisting of networks of walled towns and smaller villages organized about a central plaza, are now almost entirely overgrown by the forest.

"These are not cities, but this is urbanism, built around towns," University of Florida anthropologist Mike Heckenberger said in a statement.

"If we look at your average medieval metropolis or your medium Greek polis, most are about the scale of those we find in this faction of the Amazon. Only the ones we find are much more complicated in terms of their planning," Heckenberger added.

Helped by satellite imagery, the researchers spent besides than a decade uncovering and mapping the lost communities.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans starting in 1492, the Americas were home to many prosperous and impressive societies and large cities. These findings add to the understanding of the various pre-Columbian civilizations.

The existence of the of old time settlements in the Upper Xingu region of the Amazon in north-central Brazil instrument that which many experts had considered virgin metaphorical forests were in fact heavily pretentious by past human activity, the scientists reported.

The U.S. and Brazilian scientists worked with a member of the Kuikuro, every home-grown Amazonian people descended from settlements' original inhabitants.

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Maggie Fox)