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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 ...
For this institutionalized generosity, Inca bureaucracy used a specific open space in the city's center as a social gathering place for local lords to celebrate and drink ritual beer. [25] [26] With the creation of the Inca Empire, exchanging goods for human energy became a fundamental aspect of unified Inca rule. [7]
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 .
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.
Model tray for making chicha, Peru, Chancay-Chimu, north central-coast, c. 1400 AD, silvered copper, Krannert Art Museum The exact origin of the word chicha is debated. One belief is that the word chicha is of Taino origin and became a generic term used by the Spanish to define any and all fermented beverages brewed by indigenous peoples in the Americas. [4]
In the 19th century the Inca fertilizer guano became the most important resource in Peru's modern history, for its use as a fertilizer and as gunpowder. [10] The stock of guano built up because the Humboldt current once drew thousands of anchovies and other fish, which in turn, attracted thousands of birds.
The Inca referred to their empire as Tawantinsuyu, [14] "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.
Aclla (Quechua: aklla), also called Chosen Women, Virgins of the Sun, and Wives of the Inca, were sequestered women in the Inca Empire. They were virgins , chosen at about age 10. They performed several services.