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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 ...
An important objective in constructing andenes was to permit maize to be grown at elevations above its usual climatic limit of 3,200 metres (10,500 ft) up to 3,500 metres (11,500 ft). Maize was a prestige crop for the Incas and earlier cultures, but of the crops cultivated in the Andes, it is the most demanding of water and nutrients. [15] [16]
The crops developed by the Inca and preceding cultures makes South America one of the historic centers of crop diversity (along with:the Middle East, India, Mesoamerica, Ethiopia and the Far East). Many of these crops were widely distributed by the Spanish and are now important crops worldwide.
Ulluco: Common crop of the Andean region. As one of the major cradles of agriculture, the Andean region, has many indigenous crop species which have persisted and diversified for generations. Tools include the Chaki taklla (Chakitaqlla), a modified stick tool used for tilling, adapted to manage a variety of soil and terrain types. [1] Crops ...
Reconstruction of one of the pyramids of Aspero. After the first humans — who were then arranged into hunter-gatherer tribal groups — arrived in South America via the Isthmus of Panama, they spread out across the continent, with the earliest evidence for settlement in the Andean region dating to circa 15,000 BCE, in what archaeologists call the Lithic Period.
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. [1]
Fundamentally, it is a concept of "ecological complementarity" mediated through cultural institutions. [4] Some scholars, while accepting the structure and basic nature of the vertical archipelago, have suggested that inter-ethnic trade and barter may have been more important than the model suggests, despite the lack of evidence in the ...
In the South American Andes, farmers have used terraces, known as andenes, for over a thousand years to farm potatoes, maize, and other native crops. Terraced farming was developed by the Wari culture and other peoples of the south-central Andes before 1000 AD, centuries before they were used by the Inca, who adopted them. The terraces were ...