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That viral 'lost city in the Amazon' story from last month got me thinking
I saw this post going around about a hidden civilization discovered by satellite in the deep jungle. It sounded amazing, so I dug into the original sources. Turns out the 'city' was just a bunch of natural rock formations that some guy misinterpreted back in 2022. I spent 3 hours cross-referencing geological surveys to figure that out. Has anyone else traced a fake news story back to its original source and found it was way less exciting?
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alicer534mo ago
Oh, I remember that story. You said it was from last month, but the original satellite misinterpretation actually got big around late 2021 or early 2022. I spent a similar chunk of time digging into it, and yeah, it was just weird rock shapes and some old tree roots. Those geological surveys really help, but it's a shame how quickly a boring truth gets drowned out by a cool-sounding lie.
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ivan_harris4mo ago
What method did you use to cross-reference the geological surveys? I had a similar thing happen with a "secret alien base" story in Nevada that blew up online. Ended up pulling up old USGS topo maps from the 60s and comparing them to recent satellite shots on Google Earth Pro. Turns out the weird structures were just abandoned mining equipment from a short-lived operation in the 70s. And yeah @hannahcraig, its wild how even places like NatGeo covering the real story gets forgotten once the clickbait version spreads around.
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