Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Incas placed great emphasis on storing agricultural products, constructing thousands of storage silos (qullqa or qollqas) in every major center of their empire and along their extensive road system. [9] Hillside placements were used to preserve food in storage by utilizing the natural cool air and wind to ventilate both room and floor areas.
The Inca civilization stretched across many regions on the western coast of South America (specifically Peru), and so there was a great diversity of unique plants and animals used for food. The most important plant staples involved various tubers, roots, and grains; and the most common sources of meat were guinea pigs , llamas , fish, and other ...
The road system connected the empire from the Andes mountain in Colombia all through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, northeastern Argentina, and present-day northern Chile. The Inca roads were used to transport food, goods, people, and armies, while Inca officials frequently relayed messages using the roads across the vast stretches of the Inca Empire.
This system of work was organized within the framework of institutionalized reciprocity, the Inca emperor was united by personal relations to the regional rulers. [8] The Inca emperor regularly provided the local rulers with goods, and those partially redistributed those goods to the local people, providing them with housing, food, and clothing.
These terraces are still used. [8] Incans irrigated their fields with a system of reservoirs and cisterns to collect water, which was then distributed by canals and ditches. [9] However, by the mid-19th century, only 3% of Peru's land was still farmable. It lagged behind many other South American countries in agriculture.
Industrial crops, especially cotton, rubber, quinine, and tobacco, have become widely grown for non-food purposes. Cotton is common in clothing, rubber has many industrial uses, quinine contributed to the destruction of malaria , and tobacco contributed to many negative health effects.
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 food served at these gatherings included, alongside a variety of other plants and animals, several domesticated squash varieties, maize, and wild beans. [26] Food that needed to be processed, like cornmeal, would commonly be prepared at the feast site alongside non-food items that gave the feasts ritual or ceremonial importance. [26]