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Inca agriculture was the culmination of thousands of years of farming and herding in the high-elevation Andes mountains of South America, the coastal deserts, and the rainforests of the Amazon basin. These three radically different environments were all part of the Inca Empire (1438-1533 CE) and required different technologies for agriculture ...
Vicuñas and guanacos, though undomesticated, were used for their fine and much-prized wool. Little agriculture is performed in the puna, though in the Bolivian altiplano intensive agriculture was possible through the use of waru waru raised bed agriculture, which used specialized irrigation techniques to prevent frost from destroying crops.
The terraces were built to make the most efficient use of shallow soil and to enable irrigation of crops by allowing runoff to occur through the outlet. [9] The Inca people built on these, developing a system of canals, aqueducts, and puquios to direct water through dry land and increase fertility levels and growth. [10]
An important objective in constructing andenes was to permit maize to be grown at elevations above its usual climatic limit of 3,200 metres (10,500 ft) up to 3,500 metres (11,500 ft). Maize was a prestige crop for the Incas and earlier cultures, but of the crops cultivated in the Andes, it is the most demanding of water and nutrients. [15] [16]
The basis of the Andean socio-political organisation was the ayllu, a group of families united by real or mythical kin ties, and separated into a male and a female line.. The ruler of an ayllu was the kuraka, or chief, called kamachikuq, and was part of the class of common people ("Hatunruna
The Inca referred to their empire as Tawantinsuyu, [13] "the suyu of four [parts]". In Quechua, tawa is four and -ntin is a suffix naming a group, so that a tawantin is a quartet, a group of four things taken together, in this case the four suyu ("regions" or "provinces") whose corners met at the capital.
The Inca state was known as the Kingdom of Cuzco before 1438. Over the course of the Inca Empire, the Inca used conquest and peaceful assimilation to incorporate the territory of modern-day Peru, followed by a large portion of western South America, into their empire, centered on the Andean mountain range.
The Altiplano was the site of several pre-Columbian cultures, including the Chiripa, Tiawanaku and the Inca Empire. Spain conquered the region in the 16th century. Today, major economic activities in the Altiplano include mining, llama and vicuña herding, and services (in its cities). The area also attracts some international tourism.