Shaping Forest and Mountain: A Gallery of Maya, Mexica and Inca Farming

Gallery 4: Shaping Forest and Mountain

1Welcome. The Maya, the Mexica and the Inca farmed very different lands: hot lowland forests, a high lake valley and the steep Andes Mountains. Each label below describes an object or model in this gallery. Maya, Nahua and Quechua peoples still live in these regions today.

2Model: a reservoir at Tikal (Maya, about 700 CE). Tikal, in the lowland forest of what is now Guatemala, had no river or lake nearby, and little rain fell for four or five months each year. Workers dug large reservoirs and lined them with clay. They paved the city's plazas with plaster and sloped them gently toward the reservoirs.

3Photograph: terraces at Caracol (Maya, about 600–800 CE). Around the city of Caracol, in what is now Belize, archaeologists have mapped many thousands of farming terraces on the hillsides, many of them close to houses. Low stone walls held the soil on the slopes.

4Digging stick, called a coa (Mexica, about 1500). The Mexica are best known for chinampas, the farm plots they built in the lake. Farmers in the Valley of Mexico also cut terraces into the lower hillsides around the lakes and dug canals to bring spring water to them. They turned the soil with a wooden digging stick like this one.

5Cross-section model: an Inca terrace (about 1450–1530). Builders raised a stone wall, then filled the space behind it in layers: large stones at the bottom, then gravel, then sand, and finally rich topsoil. Heavy rains fell during the wet season. By day the stone walls soaked up the sun's heat, and at night they released it.

6Foot plow, called a chakitaqlla (Inca). Andean farmers raised llamas and alpacas, but they did not use them to pull plows. A farmer drove this tool into the ground with one foot to turn the soil of a narrow terrace.

7Aerial photograph: Moray (Inca). At Moray, near Cusco, terraces form giant rings that step down into a bowl in the ground. Temperatures can differ by several degrees from the top ring to the bottom ring. Some researchers think the Inca used Moray to test crops in different conditions; others suggest it had ceremonial uses.

8Model: qollqa storehouses (Inca). Rows of round and square stone storehouses stood on cool, windy hillsides above towns and along roads. They held maize, dried potatoes and cloth. Nearby, in the valley of the Urubamba River, the Inca straightened parts of the river and lined its banks with stone walls, and wide terraces spread across the valley floor.