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Andenes in the Sacred Valley at Pisac, Peru Diagram of Inca engineering of andenes. An andén (plural andenes), Spanish for "platform", [1] is a stair-step like terrace dug into the slope of a hillside for agricultural purposes. The term is most often used to refer to the terraces built by pre-Columbian cultures in the Andes mountains of South ...
Terraces were built to permit agriculture in the rugged terrain of the Andes. The heartland of the Inca Empire was in the high plateaus and mountains of the Andes of Peru. This area is mostly above 3,000 metres (9,800 ft) in elevation and is characterized by low or seasonal precipitation, low temperatures, and thin soils.
There are at least 14 different shapes of terrace at heights from 2,995 metres (9,826 ft) to 3,450 metres (11,320 ft) metres above sea level. Many are still in use today. The terraces closest to modern Písac are the Andenes Acchapata, which consist of up of 40 individual terraces which extend down to the valley floor and the river.
Side valleys and agricultural terraces expand the cultivatable area. [4] The valley was formed by the Urubamba river, also known as the Vilcanota River, Willkanuta River (Aymara, "house of the sun") or Willkamayu . The latter, in Quechua, the still spoken lingua franca of the Inca Empire, [5] means the sacred river. It is fed by numerous ...
In the Andes, a long mountain range with a great variety of ecozones and resources, the need to access the proper lands for specific crops or animals meant lineages created miniature colonies or sent seasonal migration (such as transhumance) in different ecoregions. As the Andes are a relatively young mountain range, there is especially great ...
The Inca faced many problems with living in areas with steep terrain. Two large issues were soil erosion and area to grow crops. [5] [6] The solution to these problems was the development of terraces, called Andenes. These terraces allowed the Inca to utilize the land for farming that they never could in the past. [6]
A notorious real-life 1972 plane crash in the Andes is the inspiration behind the new Netflix adventure drama "Society of the Snow.". The disaster happened on Oct. 13, 1972, when Uruguayan Air ...
The wide temperature differences in the terraces have created microclimates, similar to what is achieved in greenhouses in modern times. The landmark also looks similar to an open pit mine. After the mining was done, the Incas could have reinforced the walls to prevent landslides and started to grow crops on the terraces. [4] [5]