Mankind began to harness and adapt Peru’s natural wealth around 9000 BC, when the region’s hunter-gatherers first cultivated some seasonal plants. In the Andes, the domestication of llamas, alpacas and guinea pigs also began around this time.
The discovery in 1994 of the remains of the city of Caral, in the Supe Valley north of modern Lima, has shown that sedentary civilization based on complex forms of agriculture developed in Peru much earlier than previously thought.
We can now date the emergence of irrigation and canal systems to the second millennium BC. With increased productivity through irrigation, societies were able to dedicate more of their time to building, producing textiles and making pottery, thereby opening up possibilities for the trade of such products with other communities and creating the basis of a Pan-Andean culture that would lead to the emergence of the Inca Empire in the 15th century.
Under the Incas, with their almost unlimited labour force, Andean civilization set about adapting nature to serve humankind. Agricultural terracing conquered the steep slopes for the sowing of corn in the valleys and potatoes on the higher slopes, and stone-lined canals brought water down from the glacial peaks of the sacred mountains. Meanwhile, expert agronomists continually domesticated new crops, developing new strains to increase yields at agricultural research stations like Moray, above the Sacred Valley of the Incas, where descending concentric terraces mimic the many ecological floors and varying temperatures found throughout the Cusco region.
By the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century, between 250 and 300 different crops were being cultivated in the Americas, specifically in Mesoamerica and the southern Andes of Peru, where crops could even be grown above 4000 metres (13,000 feet), and some harvests be stored for up to seven years.
|
