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Map of the Andean region of South America. Current agricultural practices of the Andean region of South America typically involve a synthesis of traditional Incan practices and modern techniques to deal with the unique terrain and climatic elements of the area.
Moreover, Andean civilizations faced severe environmental challenges. The earliest civilizations were on the hyper-arid desert coast of Peru. Agriculture was possible only with irrigation in valleys crossed by rivers coming from the high Andes, plus in a few fog oases called lomas. In the Andes, agriculture was limited by thin soils, cold ...
This agricultural method was also revived by Alan Kolata of the University of Chicago in 1984, in Tiwanaku, Bolivia as well as Puno, Peru. Research on Waru Waru and its effectiveness in the past has led to a resurgence of the technique amongst contemporary Aymara - and Quechua -speaking native peoples in Bolivia and Peru.
The vertical archipelago is a term coined by sociologist and anthropologist John Victor Murra under the influence of economist Karl Polanyi to describe the native Andean agricultural economic model of accessing and distributing resources.
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 .
Most of the major cities and towns of the valles are found in broader, open valleys with expansive flat land created by ancient lakes or floodplains that is more amenable to agriculture than the highly erodible slopes. To the south and west, are the harsh, frigid deserts, salt flats and alpine grasslands of the altiplano.
Similarly, Andean communities in the Pre-Ceramic had not developed agriculture or domesticated flora or fauna, instead gaining most of their food from what they could hunt or gather from the wild, just as their Lithic Period predecessors had done, although there is evidence that some wild plants had begun to be intentionally cultivated. [15]
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.