The hyper-arid coastal desert of Peru is an unlikely place to find the electric-blue and brilliant scarlet feathers of tropical rainforest parrots. Yet, during a 2005 excavation at the religious ...

Excavations on Peru's coast reveal pre-Inca parrot husbandry, radiocarbon-dated to 1100-1450, and long-distance transport from the Amazon basin.

The team suspected that “these birds were wild-caught in the rainforest, transported alive across the Andes, and kept in ...