The Incas were the most advanced political, economic and cultural entity in Andean pre-Hispanic evolution. They were also a powerful civilization that spread its domains to the kingdom of Quito and much of Chile and Bolivia. Building on former complex societies like the Wari civilization, they founded their capital in Cusco (1 200 km southeast of Lima) and built provincial administrative centers along more than 4 000 km.

They have left evidence of a complex military, theocratic and patriarchal State with great political and religious power. When the Spaniards- and the new epidemics brought by them- reached Cusco, the empire, already undermined by a fratricidal war between Huascar and Atahualpa, collapsed. Cusco (3 400 masl) is located 1 200 km from Lima (a 55-minute flight). The recommended visit time is from April to September (dry and sunny weather). However, it must be noted that temperatures in the region change considerably according to altitude and time of the day.

According to legend, Cusco (3 500 masl) was founded by the mythical couple of Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo. Large scale remodeling, around 1 438 AD, was the work of the tenth historical Inca Pachacutec, whose name stands for “cataclysm”, “crisis”, “transformation”. Works followed an urban layout representing a puma. The animal’s womb was the huacaypata square dividing Cusco in two halves from which four roads departed, thus allegorically separating the area into four large spaces called Chichcaysuyu, Antisuyu, Collasusyu and Contisuyu, the four suyus or major regions that made up the Tawantisuyu empire.

The monumental sector, located beneath Sacasawaman, occupied a triangular space, which- imitating the shape of a puma- spreads between two rivers, Tullumayu and Saphi. The sector include 11 palaces grouped around two centers, as well as trapezoid square, presently the Plaza de Armas, the residence of women (acllahuasi) and the temples of the Thunder (Hatun Cancha) and Viracocha or Marker of the World (Quishuar Cancha), destroyed at the beginning of Colonial times and where now stands the Cusco Cathedral. In Hurin Cusco (the lower quarter) lived the supreme priest. There were Limacpampa square and the Temple of the Sun (Coricancha). Residents in the upper quarter held the social supremacy in the city. Diarchic government was reflected by this dual distribution.

How the palaces looked can be gathered from the existing remains. Each group contained wide courtyards (canchas), rooms surrounded by smaller rooms, and long roofed buildings reminding of a basilica (Kallankas). Except for the Sapan Inca residence, the palaces were inhabited by the members of panacas, that is the families of dead Incas.

Other members of the Incas elite and the non-Inca population residing in the capital lived in village-like settlements, scatters among the terraces, canals and agricultural fields distributed around the monument center. A very complex institutional system forced all of Cusco inhabitants to maintain 328 sacred spots (huacas) including rocks, springs, caverns and religious constructions scattered within and beyond view.

Built by cutting the mountain sides in the shape of stairs, the terraces were separated by pirkas or stones walls, and filled with fertile soil to achieve the optimum use of rain and water. A blending of resistance and functionality, the terraces helped to prevent landslides caused by rains in deep and narrow Andean valleys where the surface area of land that can be irrigated is severely limited.
Besides, during the rainy season, downhill runoff seriously jeopardizes farming fields and valley populations. Pre-Hispanic Andean societies solved both problems by building terraces on both sides the valleys.

During the Inca period extensive terracing work led to reconfiguring and leveling whole valleys. Terraced agriculture meant more dense farming and higher, less fluctuating yields. By providing more land suitable for farming, terraces probably of New World crops.

Terracing may have started as long ago as 900 years BC on the banks of Lake Titicaca. Since 300 AC the construction of terraces for agriculture spread until it covered a large part of the central Andes, and it boomed during the empire as part of a systematic state policy for improving land and expanding colonies that was in force until just before the European conquest.

Spreading corn and associated irrigation techniques was seemingly the reason for building terraces in Andean valleys. Above the upper altitude limit for growing corn (3 200 to 3 500 masl), rainfed farmland in the higher valleys and in the high Plateau was devoted to other staples like tubers (potatoes, oca, olluco) and local cereals (quenoa, cañihua). Certain terraces kept as family gardens were probably reserved to special varieties of some food crops, spices and medicinal plants, or to species of ceremonial meaning. On the eastern slope of the Andes, a special class of terraces was devoted to growing coca, considered the “mother plant”.