To manage water and control erosion, Andean peoples built more than a million acres of agricultural terraces. Carved like stairsteps into the hills, the Spanish voyager Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa marveled in 1572, were “terraces of 200 paces more or less, and 20 to 30 wide, faced with masonry, and filled with earth, much of it brought from a distance. We call them andenes” (platforms)—a term that may have given its name to the Andes. (Fifteenth-century Indians used more appropriate methods than those ordered by Mao in the twentieth century, and had much better results.)
They deserved admiration for finding creative ways to adapt to their environment
