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The origin of terraces or andenes in the Andes is poorly understood, but they were being built by 2000 BCE. Agriculture became essential for the subsistence of a growing population after 900 BCE. People of the Huarpa culture and the later Wari culture (500–1000 CE) built terraces into the hillsides of the Andes in Peru. [4]
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.
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 ...
There are four terraces here that were used as ceremonial space. [22] In the walls of the terraces there is a zigzagged design. Sector VII can be reached from the main plaza by pathway. Located on the east side of Choquequirao, this zone contains cultivation terraces that have markedly greater amplitude than all others throughout the complex.
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.
The first recorded accounts of Inca water transportation structures came from Spanish conquistadores in the sixteenth century. One such explorer was Pedro Cieza de León.In his published chronicles detailing his travels through Peru, he noted seeing a large wall as he headed east from Cuzco, which scholars argue he was referring to the aqueduct at the Piquillacta archeological site.
La Paz, Bolivia, is the second-largest city located in the Altiplano (after El Alto) Volcanoes in Sajama National Park (Parinacota and Pomerape). The Altiplano is an area of inland drainage lying in the central Andes, occupying parts of northern Chile, western Bolivia, southern Peru and northwest Argentina.
The city of Osorno is built upon river terraces formed during the last of Earth's geological periods —the Quaternary. 130,000 years ago, during the transition from the Santa María glaciation and the Valdivia interglacial the area of Osorno was covered by pyroclastic material derivative from large and explosive volcanic eruptions in the Andes. [3]