FOOT-PLOW AGRICULTURE IN PERU. 



By O. F. Cook. 



I With four plates.] 



Three principal types or systems are to be recognized in the study 

 of the highly specialized agriculture of the ancient Peruvians. In 

 the lower valleys, at altitudes less than 5,000 feet, farming probably 

 was limited to the more primitive milpa system, the same that is 

 still followed generally in tropical America in regions of low ele- 

 vation. Under the milpa system a new " farm " is made each year 

 by cutting and burning the trees or bushes, which clears the land 

 for planting and renders cultivation unnecessary. In some countries 

 it is customary to raise a second crop, which may receive a little 

 weeding or hoeing, but the land is not kept in cultivation continu- 

 ously. There must be a new growth of trees or bushes before the 

 same place can be cleared again by burning. 



Above the milpa belt, in the intermediate or temperate valleys 

 of the eastern Andes, at altitudes between 5,000 and 11,000 feet, 

 agriculture was of the terrace system, which the ancient Peruvians 

 carried to a higher development than any other people. The mega- 

 lithic retaining walls, built of huge rocks, unsquared, but fitted to- 

 gether with precision, testify to a high degree of industry, organi- 

 zation, and skill, and must be reckoned among the chief wonders of 

 the ancient world. Hundreds of square miles of land were reclaimed 

 by straightening rivers, walling, filling, leveling, and covering with 

 a deep layer of fine soil. All of these artificial lands had also to be 

 irrigated, often by carrying the water channels for many miles 

 through craggy mountains or along precipitous slopes. After being 

 cropped with maize continuously for centuries the terrace farms are 

 still fertile, and have enabled millions of people to live in a region 

 that in its natural condition could have been of no use for agriculture 

 purposes. 1 



In still higher valleys, at altitudes of from 11,000 to 14,000 feet, 

 the climate is colder, moisture is more abundant, and the slopes are 

 more gentle. There is less need of terracing or of irrigation, but the 

 alpine grasses and other small plants form a dense, fibrous turf, a 

 condition like that of northern countries where the plow is the basic 



1 See Staircase Farms of the Ancients, National Geographic Magazine for May, 1916. 



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