User:Emily Quist/sandbox
For Peer Review, look at section "Original Rough Draft for Incan Agriculture Edits: Emily Quist and Hunter Dougan" section Emily Quist (talk) 18:28, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
Incan Agriculture-Week 7 in class Assignment
[edit]I plan to add more on tools and technologies utilized by the Inca in Agricultural practices, including things like storage and terracing. The section on what crops were grown could also be expanded, and there can be a new section that includes the uses of each crop, including religious, cultural or other social uses. There also is not an animal husbandry section, so I was also thinking about adding a section for that as well. I chose this article in particular because it is a topic that I enjoy to learn more about and I am doing another project on it as well.
Sources
[edit]Farming Like the Inca
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/farming-like-the-incas-70263217/?no-ist
Lessons in Sustainability from the Inca Empire
http://ascelibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.1061/%28ASCE%29SC.1943-5576.0000138
Putting the rise of the Inca Empire within a climatic and land management context
https://www.clim-past.net/5/375/2009/
Inca Food & Agriculture
https://www.ancient.eu/article/792/inca-food--agriculture/
Inca Agriculture
The Incan agriculture system not only included a vast acreage of crops, but also numerous herds, some numbering in the tens of thousands, of animals taking by force from conquered enemies.[1] These animals included mainly llamas and alpacas, the dung of which was used to fertilize the crop fields.[1] Llamas and alpacas were very important providing “wool, meat, leather, moveable wealth,” and “transportation.”[1] Hpdhw2 (talk) 16:52, 13 October 2017 (UTC) The Inca also breed and domesticated ducks and guinea pigs as a source of meat.[2] This combined animal husbandry, especially that of llamas and alpacas, was very important to the the economy of the Inca, due to the lack of currency in a barter system.[3] Hpdhw2 (talk) 04:28, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
Inca farmers learned how to best use the land in order to maximize agriculture production. This expressed itself in the form of stone terraces to keep the important Andean soil from eroding down the mountain side.[4] These terraces also helped the insulate the roots of plants during cold nights and hold in the moisture of the soil, keeping plants growing and producing longer in the high altitudes.[4] The Inca often irrigated these terraces by using water melting from nearby glaciers[5]. Another method that the Inca used to gain more farm land was to drain wetlands in order to get to the rich fertile top soil underneath the shallow water.[1] The Inca also understood the value of crop rotation and planted different crops in the same fields annually replenishing the soil and producing better harvests.[1] Hpdhw2 (talk) 16:52, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
1. https://www.ancient.eu/article/792/inca-food--agriculture/
2. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/farming-like-the-incas-70263217/?no-ist
3. https://www.clim-past.net/5/375/2009/ Hpdhw2 (talk) 15:57, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
Inca Agriculture
Food Storage and technologies:
• Stored in qollqa (already wrote about this on the article) (1.) (3.)
o Sustainable engineering and architecture-important processes to feeding all the Inca people, need good storage for the years when crops don’t produce as much (3.)
o used hillside placements to keep food in storage cool by utilizing the cool air and wind to help ventilate in both floor and roof installments
o drainage canals and gravel floors in qollqa help keep foodstuffs dry
o food could be kept in qollqas for about 2 years before spoiling
• Mortar and pestle-used to grind up grains(1.)
• Stone or clay stoves- cook food over fires (1.)
• Hoe, clod breaker, foot plough- made from sharpened stones (generally cobble stones) (1.)
What food was used for:
• Religion(1.)
o Sacred fields where crops were used specifically for offerings
• Consumption (1.)
o Mostly vegetarian diet-meat was saved for special occasions
o Main vegetables in diet- maize, potatoes, grains (quinoa and canihua), tubers (oca, mashua, and maca) (2.) (1.)
o Most popular drink-Chicha, an alcoholic drink made by fermenting pulp of maize and other crops
Sources: 1. https://www.ancient.eu/article/792/inca-food--agriculture/
2. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/farming-like-the-incas-70263217/?no-ist
3. http://ascelibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.1061/%28ASCE%29SC.1943-5576.0000138
Emily Quist (talk) 14:17, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
 | This is a user sandbox of Emily Quist. You can use it for testing or practicing edits. This is not the sandbox where you should draft your assigned article for a dashboard.wikiedu.org course. To find the right sandbox for your assignment, visit your Dashboard course page and follow the Sandbox Draft link for your assigned article in the My Articles section. |
Emily Quist (talk) 16:51, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
Rough Draft: Emily Quist for Inca Agriculture
[edit]Food Security: A paragraph that I am revising
The Incas placed great emphasis on storing agricultural products, constructing thousands of storage silos () in every major center of their empire and along their extensive road system.[6] Hillside placements were used to keep food in storage cool by utilizing the natural cool air and wind to ventilate in both room and floor installments.[1] Drainage canals and gravel floors in qollqa help to keep foodstuffs dry. [1] Food could be stored for up to two years in these grainaries before spoiling due to the ventilation and drainage.[1] Dried meat (jerky), freeze-dried potatoes (chuño), maize, and quinoa were among the crops stored in large quantities for the provisioning of the Inca army and officialdom and as a hedge against poor crop years. Careful records were kept of the products and quantities stored on the knotted cords, called quipus, which the Incas used in lieu of a written language.
Farming Tools: What I am Adding to this section
Some other technologies used to produce foodstuffs include many tools made with sharpened cobble stones, stone or clay.[1] Mortar and pestles were used to grind up grains to be further used in cooking.[1] Stone and clay stoves were used to cook foods over fires from either wood or llama dung.[1] Generally made from cobble stones, farming tools like the hoe, clod breaker and foot plow were used to break up the soil and make it easier to aerate and plant crop seeds.[1] Emily Quist (talk) 16:52, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
Crops: What I am going to Edit and add
Copied from Inca Agriculture from the Crops section and edited
Llama and alpaca herding was the only agricultural pursuit possible at elevations of more than about 4,200 meters (13,800 ft). Staple crops from about 1,000 meters (10,500 ft) meters to 3,900 meters were potatoes.[7] Quinoa was grown from about 2,300 meters to 3,900 meters.[7] Maize was the principal crop grown up to an elevation of 3200 meters commonly and 3,500 metres (11,500 ft) in favorable locations. Cotton was a major crop near the Pacific Ocean and grown up to elevations of about 1,500 metres (4,900 ft). On the eastern slopes of the Andes, coca was grown up to the same elevation, and cassava (yuka) was a major crop of the Amazon lowlands. Tubers such as oca, mashua and maca were also grown.[4]
In addition to these staple crops the people of the Inca empire cultivated a great variety of fruits, vegetables, spices and medicinal plants. Some of these other foods grown consist of tomatoes, chili peppers, avocadoes and peanuts.[8] Many fruit trees were also utilized in crop production. Banana passionfruit can be grown from 2,000 to 3,200 meters, mountain papaw from 500 to 2,700 meters, Naranjilla from 500 to 2,300 meters, and Cape gooseberry from 500 to 2,800 meters.[7]
Emily Quist (talk) 02:20, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
Original Rough Draft for Incan Agriculture Edits: Emily Quist and Hunter Dougan
[edit]Food Security: A paragraph that is being revised and added to
[edit]Copied from Incan Agriculture and edited
The Incas placed great emphasis on storing agricultural products, constructing thousands of storage silos (qullqa or qollqas) in every major center of their empire and along their extensive road system.[6] Hillside placements were used to keep food in storage cool by utilizing the natural cool air and wind to ventilate in both room and floor installments.[1] Drainage canals and gravel floors in qollqa help to keep foodstuffs dry. [1] Food could be stored for up to two years in these grainaries before spoiling due to the ventilation and drainage.[1] Dried meat (jerky), freeze-dried potatoes (chuño), maize, and quinoa were among the crops stored in large quantities for the provisioning of the Inca army and officialdom and as a hedge against poor crop years. Careful records were kept of the products and quantities stored on the knotted cords, called quipu, which the Incas used in lieu of a written language. Emily Quist (talk) 14:51, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
Farming Tools: A section that a paragraph is being added to
[edit]Other technologies used to produce foodstuffs include many tools made with sharpened cobble stones, stone or clay.[1] A mortar and pestle was used to grind up grains to be further used in cooking.[1] Stone and clay stoves were used to cook foods over fires from either wood or llama dung.[1] Generally made from cobble stones, farming tools like the hoe, clod breaker and foot plough were used to break up the soil and make it easier to aerate and plant crop seeds.[1] Emily Quist (talk) 15:14, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
Crops: A section that is being revised and added to
[edit]Copied from Incan Agriculture and edited
Staple crops from about 1,000 meters to 3,900 meters were potatoes.[7] Quinoa was grown from about 2,300 meters to 3,900 meters.[7] Maize was the principal crop grown up to an elevation of 3200 meters commonly and 3,500 meters in favorable locations. Cotton was a major crop near the Pacific Ocean and grown up to elevations of about 1,500 meters. On the eastern slopes of the Andes, coca was grown up to the same elevation, and cassava (yuka) was a major crop of the Amazon lowlands. Tubers such as oca, mashua and maca were also grown.[4] Emily Quist (talk) 14:06, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
In addition to these staple crops the people of the Inca empire cultivated a great variety of fruits, vegetables, spices and medicinal plants. Some of these other foods grown consist of tomatoes, chili peppers, avocadoes and peanuts.[8] Many fruit trees were also utilized in crop production. Banana passionfruit can be grown from 2,000 to 3,200 meters, mountain papaw from 500 to 2,700 meters, Naranjilla from 500 to 2,300 meters, and Cape gooseberry from 500 to 2,800 meters.[7]
Animal Husbandry: an entire section being added
[edit]The Incan agriculture system not only included a vast acreage of crops, but also numerous herds, some numbering in the tens of thousands, of animals taking by force from conquered enemies.[1] These animals included mainly llamas and alpacas, the dung of which was used to fertilize the crop fields.[1] Llamas and alpacas were usually raised high up in the Andes, at 4,000 meters (13,000ft) and above.[9] Hpdhw2 (talk) 19:47, 17 October 2017 (UTC)Llamas and alpacas were very important providing “wool, meat, leather, moveable wealth,” and “transportation.”[1] The Inca also bred and domesticated ducks and guinea pigs as a source of meat.[2] This mixture of animal husbandry, especially that of llamas and alpacas, was very important to the the economy of the Inca, due to the lack of currency in a barter system.[3] Hpdhw2 (talk) 22:11, 26 October 2017 (UTC)
Land Use: a paragraph being added
[edit]Inca farmers learned how to best use the land to maximize agriculture production. This expressed itself in the form of stone terrace to keep the important Andean soil from eroding down the mountain side.[4]Hpdhw2 (talk) 22:23, 26 October 2017 (UTC) These terraces also helped to insulate the roots of plants during cold nights and hold in the moisture of the soil, keeping plants growing and producing longer in the high altitudes.[4] Tipon was a location in the Inca Empire that was an estate for Incan nobles, it had terrace walls that were anywhere from 6 to 15 feet tall, however the knowledge of the height of the terraces throughout the rest of the empire is uncertain.[10]Hpdhw2 (talk) 05:50, 3 November 2017 (UTC) The Inca often irrigated these terraces by using water melting from nearby glaciers.[5] The Inca transported this freshly melted water to crop fields by building irrigation canals to move the water and cisterns to store the water.[4] Hpdhw2 (talk) 15:43, 25 October 2017 (UTC) Another method that the Inca used to gain more farm land was to drain wetlands in order to get to the rich fertile top soil underneath the shallow water.[1] The Inca also understood the value of crop rotation and planted different crops in the same fields annually replenishing the soil and producing better harvests.[1]
Emily Quist (talk) 19:41, 17 October 2017 (UTC) Hpdhw2 (talk) 19:47, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
Emily Quist (talk) 20:28, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
notes
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x "Inca Food & Agriculture". Ancient History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2017-10-13. Cite error: The named reference ":0" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ a b Malpass, Micheal Andrew (2009). Daily life in the Inca empire. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. p. 38. ISBN 978-0-313-35548-6.
- ^ a b McEwan, Gordon F. (2008). The Incas: New Perspectives. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 83. ISBN 978-0-393-33301-5.
- ^ a b c d e f g "Farming Like the Incas". Smithsonian. Retrieved 2017-10-13.
- ^ a b Chepstow-Lusty, A. J.; Frogley, M. R.; Bauer, B. S.; Leng, M. J.; Boessenkool, K. P.; Carcaillet, C.; Ali, A. A.; Gioda, A. (2009-07-22). "Putting the rise of the Inca Empire within a climatic and land management context". Clim. Past. 5 (3): 375–388. doi:10.5194/cp-5-375-2009. ISSN 1814-9332.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link) - ^ a b Brandlin Daniela; Schexnayder Cliff (2013-02-01). "Lessons in Sustainability from the Inca Empire". Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction. 18 (1): 52–55. doi:10.1061/(asce)sc.1943-5576.0000138.
- ^ a b c d e f "Ch14". www.fao.org. Retrieved 2017-10-17.
- ^ a b Malpass, Michael A. (2009-04-30). Daily Life in the Inca Empire, 2nd Edition. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9780313355493.
- ^ "What Connects Llamas and Alpacas, Vicunas, and Guanacos?". ThoughtCo. Retrieved 2017-10-17.
- ^ Wright, Kenneth R. (2006). Tipon: Water Engineering Masterpiece of the Inca Empire. Reston, Virginia: American Society for Civil Engineers. p. 36. ISBN 0-7844-0851-3.
Peer review: Post Questions or Suggestions here
[edit]Emily, you did very well with providing solid content on Incan agriculture. Your information is very organized which makes it easy to read. Your citations are easy to access and your bibliography seems correct. My only suggestions would be to maybe add hyperlinks to your article that links the reader to other articles on Wikipedia. For example, the qollqas (storage silos) and quipus. (Fixed and added a few more to that section as well Emily Quist (talk) 14:53, 24 October 2017 (UTC)) I think that this would make it easier for a reader to have that accessible to them, just in case they wanted to possibly learn more about that subject or even to just look at a picture. For the paragraph that you're adding (land use) it might be beneficial to add a hyperlink to the phrase "fallow" because that is a phrase that is commonly used to refer to the practice of rotating crops. (I hyperlinked the words "crop rotation" to the crop rotation Wikipedia article, because I felt that it was more applicable than hyperlinking the words "crop rotation" to the the article on fallow Hpdhw2 (talk) 22:42, 26 October 2017 (UTC)). Other than that all of the information you used fit perfectly with the topics you chose. (Farming tools, crops, animal husbandry, etc.) overall the article draft seems to be neutral and all of the information was to the point. I never felt as though I was being distracted from the topics being presented. GuyJWG (talk) 16:50, 20 October 2017 (UTC)GuyJWG
Peer Review of Incan Agriculture by MachinaExDeo (talk) 16:46, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
[edit]I like the choice of article, the addition of the sections on Animal Husbandry and Land Use seem like very relevant and useful additions to the article.
In the Environment section you could add in a link to the Atacama Desert, the driest (non-polar) desert in the world located around the border of Chile and Peru. It would be neat to compare its boundaries with those of the old Incan Empire, and see how much of their land was an “uninhabitable” wasteland. And in either the Environment and Land Use sections it would be neat it you could somehow, maybe even roughly, find out what percentages of Incan land where at various elevation ranges, I feel that would be very enlightening. (This is out of the scope of our literature research as we are looking specifically at the Incan agricultural practices and technology associated with that, not the landscape of the area Emily Quist (talk) 22:27, 26 October 2017 (UTC))
Something I noticed in the Crops paragraph was that some of the units used seem to be incorrect. For instance the phrase, “Staple crops from 1000 meters (10,500ft) meters…” 1000 meters is actually somewhere in the region of 3300ft. (Fixed, I took out the portions that were converted incorrectly Emily Quist (talk) 14:15, 24 October 2017 (UTC)) Also in the crops section, it was stated that potatoes were a staple crop from 1000m-3000m, but, from what I understand, potatoes grow just about everywhere. The highest point in Ireland is 3415ft, but they are famous for growing potatoes. Was there a problem with the soil available to the Inca below 1000m or did the valleys not provide enough sunlight or there was a problem with soil in lower elevations? Or did the Inca not have access to much land below 1000m, as they lived in a mountainous region? Not trying to be mean, but some of these might be questions to address. (This is where the article cited states the potatoes were grown, it didn't state much on why. Searching for an article to state why but not having much luck Emily Quist (talk) 14:15, 24 October 2017 (UTC)) (This is out of the scope of our literature research as it is not something that we can find Emily Quist (talk) 22:27, 26 October 2017 (UTC))
A quick note on the animal husbandry section; “The Inca also breed and domesticated ducks…” should say “The Inca also bred…” (Thank you for catching my spelling/ grammar mistake, it is a change that will be made. Hpdhw2 (talk) 03:46, 26 October 2017 (UTC))
I liked the addition of multiple sections to the article itself, something I think we will be trying on our own article.
Happy editing! MachinaExDeo (talk) 16:46, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
I enjoyed reading about the agriculture and animal husbandry of the Incas. For the most part each paragraph is really well written out; I only spotted a couple of things I would possibly change. In the Land Use paragraph it says, "These terraces also helped the insulate the roots..." I would just change "the" to "to." In that paragraph as well it discusses that the Inca irrigated by using water from nearby melting glaciers. How did they transport that water? Lastly, in the animal husbandry paragraph it states, "The Inca also breed and domesticated ducks..." I would just change "breed" to "bred" to make it past tense since the Inca Empire is not technically still about. (Thank you for the grammar and spelling change suggestions, those will be fixed. I also added in more information from one of the sources already used in the article about how the Inca transported the glacial water. Hpdhw2 (talk) 22:17, 26 October 2017 (UTC)) the Overall, this sandbox has great organization, the writing is of a great quality, and I think the page you are adding to will have a lot more substance to it once you are finished! Kmmy47 (talk) 13:43, 20 October 2017 (UTC)