Which part of the article you linked supports the notion of large well established pre Columbian cities being a generally accepted notion prior to 2000? Indeed which part of that article supports large pre Columbian cities?
Note: I do not dispute such things in the slightest, it's just that your 2005 article strongly supports the notion that until recently there were:
long-held views that the region was sparsely populated by tribal groups who peacefully coexisted with the apparently hostile environment that surrounded them.
That supports large dispersed agrian populations but doesn't go so far as large concentrated urban areas which seems to be what the primary BBC article is attributing to the Prof. in question here.
In the arc of academic studies these are all "recent" changes in the traditional scholastic views .. although admittedly they perhaps originated a little before your own birth?
I'd started putting together a reply, but this turned me off. I'll just leave a note saying that this is ineffective discourse and you might want to reconsider your approach in the future.
> While we knew about cities in the highlands of South America, like Machu Picchu in Peru, it was believed that people only lived nomadically or in tiny settlements in the Amazon.
Machu Picchu was built in the ~1400s, not long before Magellan's voyage. Bringing that in as the example of the cities we knew about is clearly trying to communicate that we didn't believe in pre-Columbian cities in the Amazon, which is completely false. One example among many:
https://news.mongabay.com/2005/10/pre-columbian-amazon-suppo...