CLIMATE change isn鈥檛 always bad news 鈥� for the Incas, it may have fuelled the growth of an empire.
Sediments from a core going back 4000 years have revealed a surge in Inca land use and agriculture around 1100. The sediments, which contain evidence of Inca farming including the remains of seeds and mites that feed on llama dung, come from Marcacocha, a small lake near Cuzco, Peru, at the heart of the ancient empire.
Lead researcher of French Institute of Andean Studies in Lima, Peru, says warmer temperatures enabled the Inca to build mountainside terraces for growing crops at altitudes previously too cold to support agriculture, and provided meltwater from the Andean glaciers for irrigation (). He says data from a nearby ice core confirms that temperatures rose in the region around 1100.
Advertisement
Later, centuries of abundant harvests from the terraces would have freed people for other tasks, such as building extensive road networks. Most importantly, it enabled the creation of an army which swept all before it from about 1400 until defeat by the Spanish in 1533. 鈥淎ll this would have been impossible without the increase in temperature,鈥� Chepstow-Lusty argues.
[Correction, 30/07/2009: Alex Chepstow-Lusty鈥檚 institution changed from University of Montpellier to French Institute of Andean Studies]