A group of archaeologists led by Marti Pärsinen from the University of Helsinki, working in the Brazilian state of Acre, announced the discovery of an unknown civilization. You don't hear that every day - a whole new civilization! However, in the general context of the archaeological study of the Amazon, this news does not sound as sensational as it might seem.

Some shards

Pärsinen's group dug up the famous geoglyphs - geometric patterns on the ground formed by ditches and trenches. These patterns are so huge that they can only be seen from the air. Among the finds of archaeologists - a lot of clay shards. Since these shards are the only artifacts left to us from the ancient culture of the Amazon (the stone is not there), it is necessary to classify the civilizations there according to the types of ceramics. The potsherds found by Pärsinen are unlike any found before, and this is quite enough to claim the discovery of an unknown civilization.

The thing is that such discoveries in the Amazon are not so rare. The whole history of the Amazonian civilizations is the history of the struggle with the forest. It cost a man incredible efforts to clear a site in the forest and adapt it to his needs, but as soon as people left this site, the forest absorbed it in a matter of years. This is exactly what happened with geoglyphs. They were fenced areas (either fortifications or ritual complexes), they were created approximately from the 1st to the 13th century AD. When people left them (some - after the arrival of Europeans, some - even before), the sites very quickly overgrown with forest.

Geoglyphs were discovered only in the 1970s, when the Amazonian selva began to be cut down on an industrial scale, so that entire hectares of land appeared from under the forest cover and giant geometric patterns caught the eye of people who flew over these expanses on airplanes. Over the past thirty-odd years, hundreds of geoglyphs have been found throughout the Amazon basin, especially in its western part (including in the state of Acre), and their total number is presumably in the thousands. How many more unknown types of ceramics are hidden by the forest, one can only guess.

The deforestation of the Amazon continues: on the site of selva clearings in the state of Acre, new pastures are constantly appearing, Brazil is strengthening and strengthening its status as one of the largest beef producers in the world, and environmentalists are constantly criticizing and criticizing the authorities and businessmen for the extermination of the unique Amazonian ecosystem. Discovery of traces of ancient civilizations - by-effect this process, and it gave rise to unexpected consequences for everyone: the theory that the Amazonian forests are not at all as wild and untouched as they are commonly thought.

Nomads

The Amazonian land is infertile: while a forest grows on it, it, so to speak, fertilizes itself, but as soon as the forest is cut down, the rains literally wash out humus and minerals from the soil in a couple of years, and nothing stops growing on it. But if you leave the site, then the forest absorbs it, and after a few years you can again do agriculture there for a couple of years. Early European descriptions testify that in the 17th-18th centuries, the Amazonian Indians were engaged in slash-and-burn agriculture: a section of the forest is cut down and set on fire, then an agricultural community lives on it for several years, and when the soil is depleted, the community moves to another site, then to a third, and so on. Further. The next generation can again cut and set fire to the first site - the forest there has already restored the soil.

It is essentially a nomadic civilization. It leaves almost no traces that archaeologists could dig into. The fact that the ancient Amazonian Indians built something that has survived to this day in the form of geoglyphs, and intensively used clay vessels, is great luck. Geoglyphs are most likely not traces of permanent settlements: there are no human remains, and the first sign of settled life is a cemetery.

"Black Earth"

However, studies of the last two decades show that in ancient times, the civilized life of the Amazon was not limited to these semi-nomadic tribes. Throughout the basin of the great river, relatively small (average 20 hectares) plots of extremely fertile soil, the so-called "black earth" (in Portuguese - terra preta), were found in huge quantities. In these areas, ancient ceramics are invariably found - that is, people once lived here.

"Black Earth" is an amazing phenomenon. This is just the kind of soil they say: stick a stick in it and it will bloom. "Black Earth" is extremely rich in ash, humus, nitrogen, phosphorus and other minerals, it is teeming with microlife. The thickness of this extremely fertile layer of earth reaches two meters, it is not washed out by rains and is capable of fairly rapid regeneration (up to a centimeter per year).

The most striking thing is that the “black earth” is not a natural phenomenon at all. It was created by people. For centuries, millennia, they fertilized the soil, did not let the forest on it - and grew enviable crops that could feed a very impressive population - up to a million people for the entire Amazon basin.

Ancient Amazon

In 1542, fifty Spanish conquistadors, led by Francisco de Orellana, marched on a brigantine along the entire course of the Amazon. The chaplain of the detachment, the Dominican monk Gaspard de Carvajal, left a colorful description of this expedition, in which he claimed that at every step the travelers came across native settlements and even cities, roads and other attributes of a highly developed and populous civilization. Almost no one believed the tales of de Orellana and brother Gaspard: obviously, they exaggerated the wealth of the country in order to show off, and also to get money for a new expedition.

Less than half a century later, the Amazon was already almost deserted: the Spaniards exterminated many Indians or drove them into slavery, and for most of them the meeting with previously unknown diseases like smallpox was fatal, to which they, unlike Europeans, did not have immunity.

The discovery of geoglyphs, the elucidation of the origin of the "black earth" and other archaeological discoveries of the second half of the 20th century rehabilitated de Orellana and Brother Gaspard, at least in part. The great woman and archaeologist Betty Meggers found burials in magnificent clay urns in the lower reaches of the Amazon - this completed the picture of the complexly organized culture that flourished in the Amazon in the first fifteen hundred years of our era.

This culture, presumably, consisted of several urban centers connected by roads, and many smaller settlements. Each such settlement, as a rule, was a ring of wooden houses, forming a spacious square, in the center of which stood a community house - this form of villages has been preserved to this day among the Indian tribes in the Amazon basin, who by some miracle survived to our time. And where we now see geoglyphs, there were, apparently, some ritual sites.

This culture, as has been said, has left comparatively few archaeological traces - enough to judge its scope, but not enough to judge its character. The finds of the Pärsinen group (they were not made in the "black earth" and are also interesting for this) among the geoglyphs of the state of Acre are valuable already in that they supplement our knowledge of the extent of the ancient civilization, although nothing new is reported about the purpose of the geoglyphs.

There is, however, one particularly bold interpretation of recent discoveries in the Amazon. According to her, the most important trace left by the ancient civilization is ... the Amazonian selva itself. Many centuries of slash-and-burn agriculture, artificial selection fruit trees, animals and even fish, the creation of the "black earth" - all this made the most famous forest on the planet a creation of human hands, almost to the same extent as wildlife. So the Amazon can be called not only a forest, but also a garden. True, for the last five hundred years this garden has been in ruins. It must be admitted that it is very picturesque.

Modern Amazonia is difficult to attribute to the most densely populated regions of the Earth. However, once in these places there was a developed agricultural civilization with densely populated cities. More recently, scientists have found out what may have killed her. Oddly enough, these were ... reservoirs created by people in order to conserve rainwater.

For many people, the word "Amazonia" is associated with the endless virgin rainforests that grow along the banks of one of the largest rivers in the world. In these thickets, exotic animals are encountered at every step, colorful birds and butterflies flutter, and, most importantly, there are no people nearby. Only sometimes you can see in the distance a naked Indian hunter with a blowpipe filled with arrows, whose tips are moistened with the strongest curare poison in the world.

Indeed, modern Amazonia is difficult to attribute to the most densely populated regions of the Earth. Indian villages are not so common here, and their population is very small. This is not due to the fact that the Amazonian Indians were exterminated by the colonialists for many centuries. On the contrary, it was the Indians living in this region who practically did not suffer from the colonization of America. Some of them white people were first seen only in the twentieth century.

The fact is that the soils of tropical forests are not particularly suitable for agriculture, as they are quickly depleted. The rainforest is a unique natural community that produces exactly the amount of matter needed for the normal life of the ecosystem, and not a gram more. Therefore, everything that falls from the trees is almost immediately utilized by animals and fungi living in the soil. The resulting humus is exactly enough to support the vital activity of plants. Its surplus (as happens in our forests and forest-steppes) is never formed.

And since there is no accumulation of the soil layer, then the farmers in these parts, you know, have nothing special to do - well, they plowed the land once, twice, and then what? The soil, with these plowings, has already been depleted, and there is nowhere to take a new one. That is why, as scientists believed, the tribes living in the Amazon never engaged in intensive farming, preferring hunting and gathering - the good thing is that there is always something to pick up in the forest.

The number of hunters and gatherers, as we know, is never particularly high - the food source is painfully unstable, you can’t make large reserves with such a lifestyle. That is why the researchers of this region for a long time were sure that in the forests near the greatest river in the world it was always quite sparsely populated and no civilizations arose - the locals lived all the time "the old fashioned way", they did not build cities, did not pave roads, orchards and orchards not "fenced".

True, several facts have been known for a long time that do not fit into the usual picture. For example, the fact that it was in the Amazon region that the most ancient ceramics in South America (which was several centuries older than the Inca) was discovered. Hunters, as you understand, don’t really need clay pots - they don’t cook soup, they don’t stew vegetables, and carrying such luggage with you during a nomadic lifestyle is somewhat burdensome (and a pot is also not very convenient as a headdress).

In addition, the Spanish traveler Francisco de Orellana, who visited the Amazon in 1541-1542, portrayed this region as very densely populated in his report. At the same time, he described large cities located both on the banks of the river and in the depths of the forest, as well as gardens and arable land surrounding them. For a long time, scientists did not even know how to interpret this information - either the researcher described a completely different region (for example, the Orinoco River basin), or all these reports were created from the words local residents(which, frankly, like to lie), or unusual food caused strong visual hallucinations in the impressionable Spaniard.

However, not so long ago, scientists found out that Don Francisco was still right and cities in the Amazon did exist. The first of them were discovered back in 2003 when deciphering a satellite photograph of the Xingu region in Brazil. It turned out that in this region, whose territory is now occupied by virgin forests, even before the era of Columbus, there were about 20 large settlements surrounded by arable land and gardens and interconnected by a network of roads.

Over the next seven years, several expeditions explored the area, studying the ruins of ancient settlements and collecting all the items found among the ruins. They managed to establish that all cities were built according to the same plan - in each village there was a central square 120-150 meters in diameter, on which, among other things, the most important people of this city were buried. A road departed from each square, and always strictly from the northeast to the southwest, apparently, personifying the movement of the sun across the sky. The streets of large cities sometimes reached 50 meters in width.

Apparently, in the square in the center, the inhabitants of the city gathered in case of danger, as well as to perform religious and state rites and ceremonies. They spent their leisure time in one-story houses built of wood, the foundations of which were discovered along the edges of city streets. In these dwellings, scientists have found many artifacts - bone and stone arrowheads, tools, jewelry and, of course, fragments of ceramic vessels.

An analysis of the latter showed that ancient Amazonian potters, using highly complex materials, such as microscopic quartz needles obtained from certain freshwater sponges, made beautiful domestic and ceremonial vessels, with complex carved and painted ornaments. However, these craftsmen, apparently, were not aware of either the potter's wheel or glass-like glaze.

All this testifies to the fact that once in the now practically deserted region there was a developed agricultural civilization. However, until now, scientists were not clear how the ancient Indians managed to cultivate plants in the tropics? After all, there, as you know, there is endless rain for two or three months a year (in which crops cannot be planted - they will simply be washed away), and then the dry season begins almost immediately, during which the soil turns almost to dust and all seedlings can simply die .

The inhabitants of those settlements that are located directly next to the river solved this problem quite simply - they dug canals, but the area under study is located quite far from the Amazon and its large tributaries. And just recently, this mystery was finally revealed.

This summer, a Swedish expedition, exploring the remains of settlements near the Brazilian city of Santarém, stumbled upon strange depressions located near ancient fields. According to research leader Peter Stenborg, they are nothing more than the remains of ancient reservoirs that were filled with water during the rainy season. During drought, this water was used to irrigate fields and gardens.

In addition, scientists, after analyzing the soil at the site of former arable land, found that it is fundamentally different from that which is typical for the tropical forests of this region. It has an intense dark color, which is due to the high content of humus in it. The most interesting thing is that soils of this type are not found anywhere in the vicinity of Santarem.

Stenborg believes that this fertile land was created by people artificially, in much the same way as silage and compost are now made. The basis for it could be the leaves and other organic remains of those plants that the ancient inhabitants of the Amazon grew in their gardens. Scientists have established that all of them are not local. The owners apparently brought the plants with them when they came to this region six thousand years ago.

So, it turns out that the ancient inhabitants of the lands located in the Amazon basin could create artificial soil (which, by the way, neither the Mayans nor the Incas were able to do) and build reservoirs for storing water. Perhaps it was they who caused the death of this mysterious civilization.

Previously, scientists thought that the cities of the Amazon were depopulated due to epidemics of diseases never seen before in the New World, with which the Indians were infected by European settlers. Indeed, this sometimes happened in other regions. South America However, for the Amazon, which colonists rarely visited until the twentieth century, this situation was hardly typical. Most likely, civilization disappeared as a result of some kind of natural disaster, which the inhabitants of ancient cities themselves provoked by creating a system of reservoirs.

It is known that the level of groundwater in the tropics is maintained mainly by the water that entered the soil during the "wet" season. If you dig a reservoir, then all the rainwater from a large area will flow into it, leaving the surrounding soil completely without moisture. As a result, the trees begin to dry out, their roots no longer prevent soil erosion, and as a result, the place where there used to be forests turns into a barren desert.

And here the addition of artificial soil will not even help - after all, it plays only the role of a biological additive, which, interacting with the root soil layer, only increases its fertility, but does not replace it entirely. And if the foundation itself is destroyed, then these additives simply have nowhere to gain a foothold and they are also carried away by wind or storm erosion.

It seems that now only historians do not know that humanity has been living on our planet for several hundred thousand years. Evidence of this is increasing, but scientists pretend that they are deaf-blind, and even they can’t read ...

We have already reported the scarce information obtained earlier about many cities found on the seabed. Today, a little more information has appeared that will clarify one more piece of the mosaic of the great past of earthly civilization. made public very brief information about new discoveries of underwater cities. Scientists immediately declared that they were several thousand years old ... Meanwhile, quite a lot of evidence has already been found that about 13 thousand years ago there was a big war, followed by a terrible planetary catastrophe. It was this catastrophe that caused the destruction of a highly developed terrestrial civilization that built thousands of colossal structures, many of which went under water. Moreover, the level of knowledge and technology in those BEFORE the flood times was such that we will have to grow up to it for a very, very long time. Additional information about this interesting period in the life of earthlings can be found in the 2nd volume of the book by Academician N.V. Levashov "Russia in crooked mirrors" and on the site "Food Ra" ...

Ancient cities discovered in water depths

Billy Roberty

Possible connection between the old and new worlds

The ancient Egyptian civilization existed so long ago that today it seems mystical. Pyramids and temples, with their hieroglyphic images of a civilization that flourished in the past, have a mysterious, almost magical appeal. It is hard to believe that people of a highly developed society walked the streets of this ancient state.

In January 2002, it was announced that a civilization had been discovered that would appear to the people who built the pyramids to be as ancient as the pyramids seem to us. According to oceanologists from India, the archaeological remains of the lost city were discovered under water at a depth of 36 meters (120 feet) in the Gulf of Cambay, off the western coast of India. Carbon analysis has shown that the city is 9500 years old.

Underwater city near Japan

One of the greatest discoveries in the history of archeology was made in the summer of 2000 near Japan. There, at the bottom of the ocean, the well-preserved remains of the ancient city stretch for as much as 311 miles.

In the coastal waters of the island of Okinawa, divers discovered eight scattered fragments of the city. Expanding the search, they found other structures nearby. Long streets, majestic boulevards, grandiose staircases, magical vaults, giant blocks of immaculately carved and fitted stone opened up to their eyes - all this harmoniously merged into a single architectural ensemble, the like of which they had never seen.

In September of that year, 300 miles south of Okinawa, a gigantic pyramidal structure was discovered 100 feet underwater. It turned out to be part of the ceremonial center, consisting of wide walking alleys and pylons. The colossal structure is 400 feet long.

Underwater city discovered off the coast of Cuba

In the summer of 2001, researchers discovered near the Guanahabiba Peninsula (off the western coast of Cuba) at a depth of 2310 feet a site where, according to their version, a group of megalithic structures is located on an area of ​​​​about 20 square kilometers.

Upon closer examination, scientists saw a huge plateau with ordered stone structures (which turned out to be pyramids), rectangular buildings and roads. Researchers believe that the underwater "city" was built at least 6,000 years ago, when this area was above the water. They hypothesized that this part of the land sank into the abyss as a result of an earthquake or volcanic activity.

The researchers emphasize that their interpretation of this discovery is preliminary, and further research and analysis is required before an official statement can be made. Thus, the publication of this discovery is only a matter of time.

These reports completely contradict the position of most Western historians and archaeologists, who (because it does not fit into their theory) have always denied, ignored or concealed the facts that testify in favor of the fact that mankind appeared on planet Earth much earlier than is commonly believed. Now it becomes obvious that human civilization is much older than many thought.

These discoveries will force Western archaeologists to rewrite history.

Ancient cities discovered in the Amazon

In the September 19, 2003 issue of Science magazine, archaeologists from the University of Florida and their colleagues reported that they had discovered the remains of a pre-Columbian road system that links large settlements in central Brazil, in the upper reaches of the Xingu River, the southern tributary Amazons.

Researchers have found traces of wide, curb-lined roads, squares, and well-groomed parks, which indicate that the people who lived here significantly changed their habitat. These ancestors of the modern Xingu Indians dug canals around their settlements, built bridges and ditches in wetlands, and cultivated large tracts of land. This refutes the opinion that Europeans were the first to cultivate the territory of the Amazon.

Also, the opinion that the environment at that time was too hostile, and people did not organize large settlements, was not confirmed. In fact, archaeologists estimate that during its heyday, the area's population numbered in the tens of thousands.

The first written evidence associated with a subgroup of the Hingu Indians, the Kuikuro, dates back to 1884. But according to their own oral history, the Kukuro first encountered Europeans in 1750. After that, their civilization was destroyed by slavery and epidemics. By the 1950s, only 500 Xingu Indians remained.

The leader of the research team, Michael Heckenberger, said that so far they have discovered nineteen settlements, of which at least four were large centers. The settlements are built according to kuikuro cosmology. For example, roads and other structures were oriented to the sun or stars, which created, in the words of Heckenberger, a kind of "ethnocartography".

Satellite photographs show patterns that make up the settlements of the area. They also show that the vegetation now covering the area is very different from older forests, meaning that the land was either cleared or cultivated in the past.

The area of ​​the upper reaches of the Xingu River is the largest area of ​​the Amazonian forests still owned by the natives. The Kuikuro Indians still use many of the remaining bridges, ditches and canals where the settlements are located on marshy soil.

Recent discoveries have dispelled the myth that it was originally wild territory.

Now the question is: how to save the rest of the Amazon? Should the "primitive" savagery, untouched by human activity, be preserved? Or designing a landscape that helps Aboriginal life?

Perhaps both approaches should be considered, because the Amazonian jungle is as diverse as any place on Earth.

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Lost cities in the Amazon have long been a cliché in low-life fiction; serious scientists considered the selva as an environment in which only primitive human cultures can exist. Anthropological studies have so far confirmed this point of view: the Amazon is a place where Indian tribes live at the level of the Stone Age. However, archaeological data contradict anthropological data: a scientist from the University of Florida (USA) Augusto Oyyuela-Caicedo is excavating in the northeast of Peru, in the jungle near the city of Iquitos. His findings confirm the spread in scientific circles in recent times the theory that before the arrival of Europeans in the Amazon there was a developed culture with a population of up to 20 million people (much more than the number of current inhabitants of the Amazon).

Finds in Indian mounds are ceramics and earth, mainly the so-called terra preta (“black earth”), which is a mixture of local soil with human waste products, charcoal and ash. Traces of a lost culture are found everywhere in the Amazon: Brazilian archaeologist Eduardo Neves from the University of São Paulo and his American colleagues find terra preta layers near Manaus. The Indians increased the productivity of the jungle not only by fertilizing the soil: there are everywhere areas of the jungle with an abnormal number of trees bearing edible fruits. According to supporters of the existence of developed civilizations in the Amazon in the pre-Columbian era, these are the remains of orchards. Archaeological finds in Bolivia and Brazil (near the Xingu River) testify: already at the end of the 1st millennium AD, the inhabitants of the Amazon were able to move tons of soil, build canals and dams that changed the riverbeds.

The change in the views of scientists on the ancient cultures of the Amazon basin began with the research of Anna Roosevelt from the University of Illinois at Chicago in the 1980s: on the world's largest freshwater island, Marajo, at the mouth of the Amazon, house foundations, high-quality ceramics and traces of advanced agriculture were discovered.

Scholars who deny the existence of past advanced cultures in the Amazon (such as Betty Meggers of the Smithsonian Institution) see theorists as opportunists seeking to become famous by opposing classical views. They argue: if in the Amazon basin there were more advanced than now, autochthonous cultures, then they did not differ too much from the current ones - neither in terms of development level, nor in terms of population.

In response, adepts of the developed Amazonia quote the Spanish Dominican monk and chronicler Gaspar de Carbajal, who in 1541, sailing along the Napo River, wrote about “sparkling white cities”, “very fertile land”, “beautiful roads” and canoes capable of transporting dozens of warriors. . Scientists argue that a developed civilization died due to diseases introduced by Europeans, and cities built of wood and relatively compact fields were very quickly and almost completely absorbed by the jungle. (Here it should be remembered that different cultures there is a different ability to leave traces for archaeologists - depending on the materials used. If not for a few miraculously preserved notes on easily decaying birch bark, most of the ancient Novgorodians would have been considered illiterate.)

And one more accusation against those who consider the Amazon to be the birthplace of highly developed cultures: with their statements about the ability of the region to feed millions of people without harm to the environment, they contribute to corporations lobbying for the active development of the region. Eduardo Neves responds to this as follows: "We are humanizing the history of the Amazon."

What you have no idea! Did you know that a significant portion of the world's drinking water is in the Amazon? This river is the largest in the world in terms of basin area and full flow.

Did you know that the vast majority of the millions of different plant and animal species that live on our planet can be found in the Amazon rainforest? Amazonia is, without exaggeration, the world's genetic fund of the Earth!

The Amazon is so huge that tribes still live deep in the jungle that do not come into contact with civilization. And this is just a small part of all those unimaginable and amazing things that make the Amazon one of the most unique places on the planet!

The history of the Amazon is no less amazing! There are few things in the world that are as interesting and intriguing to scientists as the Amazon rainforest. But we will not reveal all the cards at once - everything has its time. Read on because here are 25 amazing facts about the Amazon that you will be interested to know!

24. Some species of ants living in the Amazon are known for raiding neighboring colonies and taking other ants as slaves.

23. Slovenian long-distance swimmer Martin Strel is the first person to swim across the Amazon, swimming 80 kilometers every day. It took him just over two months.

22. Every year for three weeks full moon causes a tidal wave that moves up the Amazon every night. Some surfers manage to ride the wave for more than 10 kilometers.

21. Under the Amazon, at a depth of about 4 kilometers, another river flows called Hamza: it is much wider and just as long.

19. Although in the past numerous expeditions tried to find the ancient cities of the Amazon, which were rumored to be covered with gold, over time, scientists began to doubt that civilization could flourish in such harsh conditions and on such barren soil.

18. Scientists have found evidence of man-made soil Terra preta that covered vast swaths of the Amazon. They believe that the inhabitants of ancient civilizations covered the earth with this artificial, nutrient-rich soil, which allowed the construction of cities and agriculture.

17. 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke (Juliane Koepcke) fell deep into the Amazon jungle when the plane in which she was flying crashed. All passengers in the amount of 91 people died, and the girl made her way through the jungle for a week and a half before she managed to reach people.

16. There are thought to be 2.5 million species of insects in the Amazon Basin, and more than half of them are thought to live under the leaf canopy.

15. Tribes live in the Amazon basin who have not yet come into contact with civilization and some scientists are against contacting them.

14. There is a theory that the Amazon is actually a giant orchard left over from a civilization that flourished in this area about 3,000 years ago.

13. So much fresh water flows from the Amazon River into the Atlantic that it desalinates the salty waters of the ocean for almost 160 kilometers. This vast area is called the Fresh Sea.

12. The mouth of the Amazon River is so wide that its waters, flowing into the Atlantic Ocean, wash the shores of the island of Marajo. Cool, right? The size of this island is approximately equal to the territory of Switzerland.

11. Once the Amazon flowed into the Pacific Ocean, but then changed its direction in the opposite direction.

10. In the forests of the Amazon, a microscopic fungus (Pestalotiopsis microspora) was discovered, which, surprisingly, can live on only plastic, more precisely, polyurethane. Moreover, he can do this even in the absence of oxygen.

9. In terms of water flow, the Amazon River is larger than the next 8 largest rivers on the planet combined.

7. A fish called arapaima weighing about 136 kilograms lives in the waters of the Amazon. It is covered with durable embossed scales, the multi-layered compositional structure of which allows it to survive in the environment of piranhas.