Who:
Wht:
Where:
When
why:
[1]
empire? [1]
Document 3
. . . In addition to possessing ingenious [resourceful] farming systems and outstanding public
works, the Incas and their forebears [ancestors] had remarkable ways to preserve food.
One technique was to freeze-dry root crops. In the Andean uplands, the nights are so cold
and the days are so dry that tubers [root crops] left out in the open for a few nights and days
become freeze-dried. Usually, the people help the process along by covering the tubers at
night to keep off dew and by trampling on the tubers during the day to squeeze out the water
released by the previous night’s freezing.
The resulting product, made mostly from potatoes and known as chuño, was vital to the
Incas’ ability to carry out their conquests and maintain command of the empire. For instance,
it enabled the millions of inhabitants to withstand natural disasters, it supplied passing armies,
and it was a long-term insurance against crop failure (a constant threat in this frost-prone
region). The Incas planned so well that conquistador Hernando de Soto was moved to say:
“There was never hunger known in their realm.” The conquistadores quickly recognized
chuño’s virtues. Indeed, some Spaniards made fortunes shipping chuño by llama train to the
barren heights of Potosí (in today’s Bolivia), where it was the main food for slaves working in
the silver mines. . . .
Source: National Research Council, Lost Crops of the Incas:
Little-Known Plants of the Andes with Promise for Worldwide Cultivation,
National Academy Press
3a Based on this document, what is one action taken by the Incas to preserve food?