Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire altered landscape development

Human activity resulting from the Spanish conquest had a profound effect on coastal change in northwestern Peru, according to researchers at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute.
Daniel Belknap, a professor of Earth sciences, and Daniel Sandweiss, a professor of anthropology and Quaternary and climate studies, researched how demographic and economic effects of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire altered landscape development on the Chira beach-ridge plain in northern coastal Peru.
The findings were documented in an article, “Effect of the Spanish Conquest on coastal change in Northwestern Peru,” which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Sandy beach ridges
The researchers determined that human activity, specifically the disposal of mollusk shells, was essential to preserving the sandy beach ridges along the Chira River in Peru.
“This type of interdisciplinary research is a hallmark of the Climate Change Institute at UMaine and contributes to better understanding of the impacts of humans on coastal systems,” Belknap says.

http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/05/2014/spanish-conquest-of-the-inca-empire-altered-landscape-development

Amazing, it reminds of something I saw a few years ago:

Here's a map of North America as it was during the Late Cretaceous:



It shows how a shallow sea covered the edges of what are now the coast of the U.S. south and east.

That sea receded but left rich, fertile soil behind. 65 million years later, Europeans moved into these areas and put African slaves to work on plantations that took advantage of the good soil in that region.

Hundreds of years after that, institutional slavery is over in the U.S., but most of the slaves' ancestors didn't move very far, as you can see in this map, which shows in blue the areas of the U.S. South won by Barack Obama in 2008: