Because intensive agriculture has been regarded a prerequisite for complex societies, it has long been claimed that civilizations can arise only in such farm-friendly places. The Peruvian littoral is an agronomical no-go zone: barren, cloudy, almost devoid of rain, seismically and climatically unstable. Except along the rivers, nothing grows but lichen and epiphytes (rootless plants that draw moisture from the fog). “It looks like the last place you’d want to start up something major,” Creamer said to me. “There doesn’t seem to be anything there to build it on.” Nonetheless, they built it.
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