Recent discoveries, including funerary urns with highly decorative patterns, and technological advances like the remote sensor system known as LiDAR, are shedding new light on our understanding of pre-Columbian societies in the Amazon. Scientists speculate the rainforest was home to between 8 and 10 million people living in large, well-established communities.
Film Interviewees
- David Green – Ethnologist
- Stéphen Rostain – Archaeologist, CNRS
- Doralice Orlando – Palikur Potter
- Mickaël Mestre – Archaeologist and Research Engineer, Inrap
- Anne Rapp Py-Daniel – Archaeo-Anthropologist, Federal University of Western Pará
- Christiana Barreto – Archaeo-Anthropologist, Emílio Goeldi Museum
- Philippe Descola – Anthropologist, Collège de France
- Edithe Pereira – Archaeologist, Emílio Goeldi Museum
- Guillaume Odonne – Ethnobotanist, CNRS
- Eduardo Nueves – Archaeologist, University of São Paulo
- Manuel Arroyo-Kalin – Geoarchaeologist University College London
Secrets of the Dead: Hidden in the Amazon is a co-production of ARTE France, IMAGISSIME, and Inrap, in association with The WNET Group. Directed by Marc Jampolsky and Marie Thiry. Based on an idea by Marie-Hélène Baconnet. Produced by Élodie Polo Ackermann. Narrated by Jay O. Sanders. For Secrets of the Dead: Benjamin Phelps is supervising producer. Stephanie Carter is executive producer. Stephen Segaller is executive in charge.
Original production funding for Hidden in the Amazon was provided by the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC) – COSIP program, PROCIREP–ANGOA, and the French Ministry of the Overseas.
Funding for Secrets of the Dead is provided by public television viewers.