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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.
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 ...
The Incas are renowned for their precision in stone masonry. The architecture was a means of bringing order to untamed areas and the people of the Andes region. Machu Picchu, located in the Sacred Valley, is an example of the Incas adapting building strategies that acknowledge the topography of the area.
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.
Noted American archeologist Ephraim George Squier noted several aqueducts during his exploration of Peru in the late 1800s, including those that watered gardens on the terraces of the Yucay or Sacred Valley, north of Cuzco. He also recorded an account of the ruins of a sixty-foot-high aqueduct in the foothills of the Andes near Lima. [4]
The terraces of Moray. The Inca state drew its taxes through both tax in kind and corvée labor drawn from lineages and administered through a bureaucracy composed largely of local nobility. The corvée labor force was used for military operations as well as public works projects, such as roads, aqueducts, and storage buildings known as tampu ...
Within the Andean region, the Ox Area unit typically traverses less environmental niches and is thus better suited for monoculture production as opposed to polyculture. Thus, due to the Green Revolution, the Andean region saw a decrease in cultivated hill fields and an expansion of Ox Area units. [3]