Tony Trupp

In the highlands they make Chuño with their potatoes, where they leave them exposed to the sun and frost over several days, repeatedly stomping them barefoot to squeeze out liquids. That freezing at high altitudes helps dehydrate and preserve them, where they can then last for years, rehydrating by boiling in soups. The Inca would then keep those in high altitude store houses, and distribute them in times of famine.

TLDR: corn was being eaten during that period, but wasn’t really a primary staple for early Andean cultures until later. There was a big debate for decades over whether the foundation of early Andean civilization with the Caral-Supe culture was more primarily based upon seafood rather than domesticated crops. The idea was first proposed in 1975 by Michael Moseley calling it the "Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization" (MFAC) hypothesis. That was controversial since the common assumption was that civilization required domesticated crops to become established. Recently studies have partially disproven that hypothesis, where they have since found a lot more domesticated crops dating to that period, and found that 55-70% of their diet did still come from plants. But they did still confirm that a significant portion of their diet was still coming from seafood, and it was their most important protein source. earthasweknowit.com/pages/ca… Regarding the potato vs corn question, my understanding is that except for sweet potatoes, most of their potatoes tended to grow much better in the Andean highlands, and those were very important for highland cultures like the Inca, Wari, and Tiwanaku. But the first cities formed on the coasts, where other crops were more important. There was trade with the highlands dating back to the caral supe civilization though, so they may have still had access to those highland potatoes. They were cultivating a wide variety of edible plants, such as sweet potatoes, beans, squashes, avocado, guava, lucuma, achira, pacay, and chili peppers (Shady, 2006; Hass et al., 2005). A study examining microscopic traces in coprolites, pollen records, and stone tool residues was also able to determine that maize (corn) was in fact being eaten at these early sites (Haas et al., 2013), although it wasn't yet a staple food as in later periods (Pezo-Lanfranco et al., 2022).

This site is only 5,000 years old, not before some supposed global deluge from 10,000 years ago. There were periodic Andean floods related to severe El Niño events. Severe flooding started towards the end of this culture’s prominence, and seems to have contributed to their decline. Another period of severe flooding corresponds to the end of the Moche culture, destroying some of their main temples. Some people conflate those later regional floods with the global flood mythology. We can see from the nearby site of Huaca Prieta how the construction of pyramids gradually became more sophisticated over thousands of years, starting around 7800 bp, beginning as just a simple mound. There also isn’t any evidence of this kind of large temple structure or cities in the Andes from 10,000 years ago, only paleolithic/archaic style remains. Agriculture was only just beginning there around that time, so couldn’t really support large dense populations yet. If there were some advanced civilization from before 10,000 years ago, that supposedly taught their descendants their skills, you wouldn’t expect to see it taking like 5000 years to start building nice temples and cities like this again, as if they’re gradually inventing it themselves over millennia.

I fixed it for you.

These are generally interpreted as depictions of Orcas, which is seen as one of their deities. They understood that moisture rolled in from the ocean, resulting in much needed rain. Some of their fertility rituals also involved bringing seashells from the coast as offerings.