Moxos

     From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Moxos (or the Llanos de Moxos) is a seasonally flooded tropical savanna located in the Bolivian Amazon. It was the setting for many complex prehispanic societies, many of which constructed agricultural earthworks such as raised fields, causeways, canals and mounds. These earthworks were built and used from no later than 1 BC/AD until about AD 1450. Prehispanic peoples made decorated pottery, wove cotton cloth, and in some places buried their dead in large urns.

Although Europeans arrived in the Americas in the late 15th century, they did not come to Moxos to stay until the late 17th century. The missions established by Jesuit missionaries in the 17th and 18th centuries became many of the modern towns in Moxos.

Today, Moxos is part of the Bolivian department of the Beni. Since the 1950s, ranching has become the most important form of agriculture, and ranches dominate the landscape.