A forgotten mountain settlement network
In the early years of the 16th century, the first travellers to cross the high Alpine region reported seeing extensive routes, including settlements and bridges. These reports were subsequently (1) ________ as fantasies, however, and for centuries the valleys were considered a largely undeveloped landscape. In recent decades, however, logging has helped reveal evidence, mainly in the (2) ________ of stone platforms, of extensive roadside settlements. In one recent study of a (3) ________ remote section of the mountains, researchers (4) ________ aerial photographs and identified 81 abandoned sites, (5) ________ from small shelters to extensive mountain villages. The team also visited many sites and came (6) ________ pieces of pottery and other traces of domestic activity. These discoveries have added (7) ________ to the idea that communities in the mountains were much larger than once thought, and it is now estimated that as many as ten thousand people lived there. What happened to them all? According to one expert, 'Harsh winters arrived unusually early, and communities were weakened by repeated avalanches and isolation, even before visitors ever (8) ________ foot in the area.'