The Incas: Setting and Scale

The Incan Empire at its height ranks as one of history's most impressive empires. They controlled more  land than the Ming Dynasty, Ivan the Great, the Ottomans, the Aztecs, and any European state. They extended in a thin North-South direction that covered over 32 degrees of latitude. That's comparable to St. Petersburg to Cairo. The control by one power over so much land is even more impressive when one considers the variety of environments within the Incan borders: of the thirty-four types of climatic zones, Peru contains twenty. In Turn Right at Machu Picchu, Mark Adams describes the experience of on hike as walking through “four seasons in one day.”

The Incas lived, and I currently live, in an environment that is less than hospitable to human habitation. Highland Peru is the only place on the planet “where millions [of people] insist, against all apparent logic, on living at 10,000 or even 14,000 feet above sea level. Nowhere else have people lived for so many thousands of years in such visible vulnerable circumstances” (John Murra, Cornel Anthropologist). The mountains are steep, which means there's a good amount of work required just to make the land flat enough to farm. The Incans would built series of steps, or terraces, into the sides of mountains and varied the crops based on the amount of sunlight each level received, thus they could grow a variety of crops in one location. This is just one example of the ingenuity of the Andean people throughout history. We'll talk more about the Incas' most famous works in the future.

But agricultural innovation was just part of the adaption the Incans needed. They also created a network of trading from East to West (which is also from high altitude to low altitude). This allowed the people in high altitudes to enjoy ocean fish and the people in low altitudes to enjoy the immense variety of potatos available in the mountains. This diversification protected all groups against natural disasters. If the potato harvest was hurt by an early frost, residents of high altitudes wouldn't be starving. This survival strategy is called vertical archipelagoes.

Finally, it's important to have a sense of place when studying any civilization. So here's a map. 

As you can see, the Incan Empire (officially called Tawantinsuyu) was divided into four provinces, with Cusco at the center of everything. To connect this vast empire to the capital, the Incas develop the biggest road system on the planet, building about 25,000 miles of roads. Many of their roads, such as the famous Inca Trail, are still useable today with little to no maintenance by the Peruvian government.

Image sources

Terrace Agriculture

Map of Tawantinsuyu