"Phorusrhacids, colloquially known as terror birds, are an extinct clade of large carnivorousflightless birds that were the largest species of apex predators in South America during the Cenozoic era; their conventionally accepted temporal range covers from 62 to 1.8 million years ago." Source: Wikipedia.
Terror birds spread into North America around 2.7 million years ago after the formation of the Isthmus of Panama connected the two continents, leading to a cross-migration of flora and fauna known as the Great American Interchange.
It's possible that early humans coexisted with descendants of these monsters in South America. According to Wikipedia, "...reports from Uruguay of new findings of relatively small forms [of terror birds] dating to 18,000 and 96,000 years ago would imply that phorusrhacids survived there until very recently (i.e., until the late Pleistocene); the initial report of such a recent date has been questioned."
"The remains of 227 children have been discovered at a site in Peru in what experts believe is the world's largest sacrifice site." Source: Daily Mail.
"Researchers have been digging at the site in Huanchaco, a beach-side tourist town north of the capital Lima, since last year.
"Chief archaeologist Feren Castillo said the children, who were aged between four and 14, were sacrificed in a ritual to honor the pre-Colombian Chimu culture's gods."
Note: "Huanchaco's original population were indigenous fishermen, who worshiped the moon and a golden fish called Huaca Taska. Some accounts suggest the name 'Huanchaco' originate from 'Gua-Kocha', a Quechua word meaning 'beautiful lake'. During the period of the Chimú culture, 800 to 1400, Huanchaco was the port for Chan Chan, which was established 4 km away. It was also the main port during Moche period, and was described by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega as the preferred port of the Incas." (Wikipedia)
"A relief thought to be 3,800 years old has been revealed by archaeologists in Peru. The wall, unveiled on Monday, was found inside a public ceremonial building at the Vichama site, north of Lima." Source: Archaeology News Network.
According to Ancient Origins, "...3,800 years ago, the people living in what is now called Vichama, Peru carved snakes and human heads into their walls alongside depictions of emaciated people. They were starving and dying and hoped a water deity would finally be lenient and send them some rain to let their friends, family, and neighbors survive.
"...Excavations suggest [Vichama] was occupied during the Late Archaic period (3000 -1800 BC) and was an agricultural and fishing community. It was named after a Pre-Columbian demigod and has been excavated by archaeologists since 2007."
Notes: "The archaeological site of Chavin gave its name to the culture that developed between 1500 and 300 B.C. in this high valley of the Peruvian Andes. This former place of worship is one of the earliest and best-known pre-Columbian sites. Its appearance is striking, with the complex of terraces and squares, surrounded by structures of dressed stone, and the mainly zoomorphic ornamentation." Source: UNESCO World Heritage List.
Chavin de Huantar was a ritual center and pilgrim's destination as well as a major trade hub. "More so than its stunning architecture, Chavín de Huántar was a place of great mystical significance. A shaman elite wielded immense power through the use of drugs, architectural conceits, and the aegis (or threat) of divine sanction. Indeed, though religious rites are hardly attestable, this is in part due to their malleability at the hands of the shamans." Source: Global Heritage Fund. In other words, the religious practices at Chavin de Huantar are hard to reconstruct because the shamans adapted their rituals to suit the circumstances.
The site was occupied by pre-Chavin peoples as long ago as 3000 BC. The Chavin Culture built the temple sometime during the mid 2nd - mid 1st millenium BC and it became a major ceremonial center with its own oracle, shamans and a small elite with a direct pipeline to the gods. The Chavin civilization began to decline around 500-300 BC, perhaps as a result of a general loss of political unity in the Andean world.
In 2012, Popular Archaeology reported that "... a recent archaeoacoustic study suggests that the ancients of the 3,000-year-old Andean ceremonial center at Chavín de Huántar, in the central highlands of Peru, practiced a fine art and science of manipulating sound with architecture to produce desired sensory effects. With the assistance of architectural form and placement, and sounds emitted from conch-shell trumpets, the oracle of Chavín de Huántar 'spoke' to the ancient center's listeners."
In other words, the "voice of the oracle" was an acoustical trick. In fact, if there was a voice, it had to be a trick (unless you think that oracles are real). The shamans and temple priests were probably running a con on the gullible pilgrims who visited the temple and the pronouncements of the oracle could have been one of the ways they exerted control over their neighbors.
"In the bone-dry coastal desert of northern Peru, the ancient Moche sculpted and painted intricate murals on the adobe walls of the site now known as Huaca de la Luna (Temple of the Moon). Created between A.D. 100 and 800, the images hold intriguing clues to a mysterious people who left no written texts to help explain their beliefs and customs." Source: National Geographic (2013)
"A small pouch, made from three fox snouts neatly sewn together, may contain the world’s earliest archaeological evidence for the consumption of ayahuasca, a psychoactive plant preparation indigenous to peoples of the Amazon basin that produces potent hallucinations." Source: National Geographic.
"The pouch likely belonged to a shaman in what is now southwestern Bolivia around a thousand years ago, according to José Capriles, an anthropologist at Penn State University and an author of a paper published on the discovery today in the journal PNAS."
Note: An analysis of the pouch's contents "revealed traces of bufotenine [found in toad skins and mushrooms, among other things], benzoylecgonine [a cocaine metabolite] and cocaine (likely from coca leaf), dimethyltryptamine (DMT), harmine [an alkaloid found in ayahuasca], and possibly psilocin, a chemical component of psychedelic mushrooms."
"One hundred ritually sacrificed guinea pigs dressed up in jewellery have been discovered at an Inca archaeological site in Peru. The rodents were found to have been adorned with earrings and necklaces, and some of them wrapped up in tiny rugs—the first time such a find has been made." Source: Archaeology News Network.
"An ancient group of people made ritual offerings to supernatural deities near the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, about 500 years earlier than the Incas, according to an international team of researchers. The team's findings suggest that organized religion emerged much earlier in the region than previously thought." Source: Phys.org.
Note: "The island was continually occupied from at least 2200 BC up to the present day," according to Wikipedia. "There is a significant Early Formative occupation (1800-1100 BC), Middle Formative (1100-500 BC) and Upper Formative (500 BC - AD 500) ... The earliest recorded pottery on the island dates to between 1426 and 1316 B.C."
"Part of the ancient archaeological site of Tiwanaku, Bolivia, believed by Incans to be where the world was created has been reconstructed using 3D printed models of fragments of an ancient building." Source: Science Daily (2018).
"Norway has agreed to hand back thousands of artefacts removed from Easter Island by famed explorer Thor Heyerdahl during his trans-Pacific raft expeditions in the 1950s. An agreement was signed by representatives of Oslo's Kon-Tiki Museum and officials of Chile's culture ministry at a ceremony in Santiago as part of a state visit by Norway's King Harald V and Queen Sonja. The museum pieces include carved artifacts and human bones from the Rapa-Nui, the first inhabitants of the remote Chilean island in the Pacific." Source: Daily Mail.
Comment: Heyerdahl didn't loot these artifacts and human remains:
"In an understanding with the Chilean authorities, Thor Heyerdahl brought many objects and remains back to Norway and the Kon-Tiki Museum for further examination. The agreement was to return the material when the studies were complete, and the museum has now taken the initiative to return the items to Chile." Source: The Royal House of Norway.
Check out the Royal Court picture of the King and Queen visiting Easter Island in 2014. They look like a couple of Disney World tourists and even though I don't know anything about them I suspect they're typical progressives. The official notice describing the transfer even manages to slip in some open-borders propaganda:
"The King met Thor Heyerdahl on several occasions, and has described him as a wonderful storyteller. 'Sitting at a table with Mr Heyerdahl was like setting out on an adventure,' King Harald said in an interview after visiting Easter Island with the Queen in the spring of 2014. 'He may not always have been right, but he made people think. He approached problems from a completely different angle from everyone else.'
"A quote from Thor Heyerdahl himself illustrates this point: 'Borders? I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.'"
I admire Heyderdahl. He was one of the last great explorer/adventurers, but if he really believed that borders are just a mental construct he was a damn idiot. The history of Easter Island itself is a classic example of what happens to a nation or people when they don't have secure borders.