Wow...5 different approaches....I’m impressed....s/
WHY would people migrate to a barren, frigid, inhospitable place where food doesn’t grow and it’s a challenge every day to survive? Food was plentiful at sea level and survival was far easier.
Because it makes absolutely zero sense, I postulate they were Democrats.
When did the Andes mountains rise? According to the New York
Times, (Oct. 3, 1989), pp. C1 and C14, “Archaeologists working
in Peru have unearthed stunning evidence that monumental
architecture, complex societies and planned developments first
appeared and flowered in the New World between 5,000 and 3,500
years ago.” (emphasis added) The author of the article,
William K. Stevens goes on to say, “Around 4,000 to 3,700 years
ago, activity abruptly shifted and irrigated agriculture
replaced fishing as the main economic resource”. Why would a
civilized people leave a thriving, hospitable environment to go
live inland in an inhospitable region? Stevens states, “It is
something of a mystery to archaeologists why any major
civilization would develop in the Andean valleys and on the
Peruvian coast. The region’s altitude and aridity make it
‘grossly hostile’ said Dr. [Michael] Moseley [an archaeologist
at the University of Florida who has long worked in the region]
who added: ‘That anyone ever lived there is a bit of a
surprise.’ People do not move from more comfortable regions to
ones that are “grossly hostile”. They move instead to regions
that are distinctly more conducive to life. In all texts that
deal with Egyptian, Hindu, Chinese, and Mesopotamian
civilizations, the authorities claim that these civilizations
moved into hospitable river valleys from arid regions, not the
other way around. “The emerging picture of this earliest
American civilization is that of a people tied initially to the
sea, but then moving abruptly — no one knows why — into the
Andes highlands to build a flourishing economy based on
irrigated agriculture that prospered in spite of the harsh,
cold, arid climate at altitudes around 10,000 feet.” But it is
much more reasonable and probable that these cities were built
at lower elevations and were uplifted with the Andes about 3,500
years ago when civilization there declined.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/talk.origins/Nkgi6k0TKJw/5cxCfEGvXTUJ