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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 .
Behind the retaining wall, the bottom one metre (3.3 ft) was filled with large stones, overlaid by a layer about 1 metre (3.3 ft) thick of sand or gravel. Capping the top of the terrace was a layer of topsoil about 1 metre (3.3 ft) thick. The result was a terrace providing "well-drained rich soil and a level surface for growing crops."
In agriculture, a terrace is a piece of sloped plane that has been cut into a series of successively receding flat surfaces or platforms, which resemble steps, for the purposes of more effective farming. This type of landscaping is therefore called terracing. Graduated terrace steps are commonly used to farm on hilly or mountainous terrain.
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]
The Inca were a mountain-based culture that expanded when the climate became wetter, often sending conquered peoples down from the mountains into fallow but farmable lowlands. In contrast, the Moche were a lowland culture that died out after a strong El Niño , which caused abnormally high rainfall and floods followed by a long drought .
Inca animal husbandry refers to how in the pre-Hispanic andes, camelids played a truly important role in the economy. In particular, the llama and alpaca —the only camelids domesticated by Andean people— [ 1 ] which were raised in large-scale houses and used for different purposes within the production system of the Incas .
The Inca complex at Pisac is a large Incan complex of agricultural terraces, residences, guard posts, watchtowers and a ceremonial/religious centre located along a mountain ridge above the modern town of Pisac in the Sacred Valley of Peru.
Quipu is a Quechua word meaning 'knot' or 'to knot'. [16] The terms quipu and khipu are simply spelling variations on the same word.Quipu is the traditional spelling based on the Spanish orthography, while khipu reflects the recent Quechuan and Aymaran spelling shift.