[Vigilanteman]

I once studied under an old professor who was Irish-American by birth and Sioux by adoption. He was somewhat of an outcast in his field because he didn't buy into the northern route theory either, although he did not discount the possibility that some native peoples may have used that route. The Ainu of Japan and Aleuts of Alaska, for instance, have many cultural similarities.

His major thesis was hard to argue with: the most advanced remnants of ancient precolumbian peoples are concentrated between Mexico City and Northern Chile. Under what logic would an ancient civilization bypass mild climates on what is now the American Pacific coast and migrate thousands of miles southward to build their greatest cities in the jungles? It just doesn't make sense.

[Fraxinus]

His major thesis was hard to argue with: the most advanced remnants of ancient precolumbian peoples are concentrated between Mexico City and Northern Chile. Under what logic would an ancient civilization bypass mild climates on what is now the American Pacific coast and migrate thousands of miles southward to build their greatest cities in the jungles? It just doesn't make sense.

I have to disagree with your professor. The major civilizations of the Americas were near those places with the greatest net primary production (food to feed the cities), and close to those areas where the two primary staple food crops of the Americas originated. Corn was first domesticated by accounts I have read in southern Mexico, and the other primary starch, Potatoes originated in the Andes highlands. A city cannot exist without a surplus from the farming areas around it.