Inca success in Peruvian Andes 'thanks to llama dung' (BBC)

By Caroline Anning
BBC News

One of the world's greatest ancient civilisations may have been built on llama droppings, a new study has found.

Machu Picchu, the famous Inca city set in the Peruvian Andes, celebrates the centenary of its "'discovery" by the outside world this July.

Dignitaries will descend on site for a glitzy event in July marking 100 years since US explorer Hiram Bingham came upon the site, but the origins of Machu Picchu were far less glamorous.

According to a study published in archaeological review Antiquity, llama droppings provided the basis for the growth of Inca society.

It was the switch from hunter-gathering to agriculture 2,700 years ago that first led the Incas to settle and flourish in the Cuzco area where Machu Picchu sits, according to the study's author Alex Chepstow-Lusty.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13439093




Fertilizer makes civilizations, it seems.

That sorta makes llama dung the original sin, I guess, at least in preColumbian MesoAmerica.