“…First, population centers, not agriculture, initiated land degradation within the study region. This is similar to other prehistoric societies (1,(60)(61)(62) and further falsifies the ''pristine myth'' of prehistoric indigenous American landscapes (22,24,27), but with the following caveat: early degradation was settlement-wide, not landscape-wide, a pattern that persisted throughout the Prehispanic period. This suggests human, rather than climatic (or other), causation.…”