Did climate change create a mysterious civilization 5,000 years ago?
In 2001, archaeologists digging in Peru revealed a shocking discovery: massive man-made structures, hundreds of feet in diameter, built with stone and dirt. They found dozens of these mounds in the arid valleys of Peru’s Norte Chico region, running from the Andes Mountains to the west coast. These certainly aren’t the first mounds discovered in Peru, but there’s something special about them. They may represent a shift in the most basic understanding of the origins of civilization in the Americas. They look like flat-topped pyramids, up to 85 feet (26 meters) tall [source: ScienceDaily]. Compared to the pyramids of the Mayan empire in South America or, later, the Incan empire in Peru — structures that were hundreds of feet tall — that’s not so impre
