Chapter 6 describes the importance of textiles, fishing, and maize for Mesoamerican civilization. These products, researchers believe, relate substantively to the particular histories of these civilizations, challenging established beliefs of how civilizations develop. In Peru, an previously-undiscovered civilization called Norte Chico shapes the region in significant ways. In order to construct its formidable stone monuments, centralized government becomes necessary, not only to construct these cultural institutions but to continue these intensive agricultural experiments. However, another important plank of this investigation is a new hypothesis: that the foundations of Andean societies have maritime roots. This hypothesis was not immediately accepted at first, but advances in scientific analysis of late-Pleistocene coastal foragers gives support to the theory. It was not thought that a strongly-maritime civilization would have been able to project power inland, yet careful examination of artifacts and carvings from the region reveal a startling find: a long-running religious tradition, evident in patterns seen on carvings dating from vastly-separated periods. Bearing this in mind, the prehistory of the Andes presents a challenge to prior, Eurocentric ideas of antiquity.