Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 empire's structure and economy necessitated the construction of these bridges. [35] The fibers were tied together to form a rope that was as long as the bridge's desired length. Three of these ropes were braided together to make one stronger and longer rope; the ropes were braided until they met the required distance, weight, and power.
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.
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 people of the Inca Empire of South America grew large surpluses of food which they stored in buildings called Qullqas. [115] The most important crop domesticated in the Amazon Basin and tropical lowlands was probably cassava, (Manihot esculenta), which was domesticated before 7000 BCE, likely in the Rondônia and Mato Grosso states of ...
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.
A water channel to drain and irrigate andenes. Andenes were complicated to build, requiring provisions for drainage and irrigation. The first step in constructing an andén was to lay an underground or bedrock foundation about 1 metre (3.3 ft) deep to lend strength and stability to the retaining wall, which might rise about 2 metres (6.6 ft) above the slope of the ground.
The immediate area surrounding the capital city and the lake eventually became the last source of substantial agricultural food production for the empire, due to the resiliency of the raised fields to efficiently produce food crops, but in the end even the intelligent design of the fields was no match for the changing climate.