“The driest desert in the world meets the ocean.” Atacama Desert, Chile. Photograph courtesy of: © Allison Davies
Excerpts;
A relatively wet climatic period may have triggered the development 7000 years ago of complex culture in hunter-gatherer communities along the Atacama coastline, including the earliest known examples of ritual mummification.
Now, researchers posit that cultural innovations, including the cult of mummification, were spurred by environmental change.
“Environmental change acted as a positive and creative force in the building up of social complexity, instead of being associated with the collapse of society, as is usually emphasized…”
