Inca, water, earth....

Music by Sol y Luna, Atahualpa.

Not far from Cusco is Moray. It’s a place where the Incas used to experiment with agriculture on different altitudes. It’s build like circles and is said to be a very energetic place (for those of us who believes in energy fields in nature).

So growing such as maize on 200 meters more on each terrace, it was possible to note that the corn on high altitude became sweet, but small. Therefore the ideal growth for maize would be somewhere in the middle of the laboratory terraces, that is why so much maize is grown in Urubamba where the altitude is ideal.

Although today, it’s very hard to make out the ideal place for crops since we have the issue of climate change. It makes it also difficult to decide what crops to grow regarding to the weather of the first twelve months the coming year. By observing the twelve first days of August, the Incas could foretell the coming years’ climate. For instance, if raining the first of August, it would be a damp January. If the sun was shining the forth of August, the coming year of April would be dry and warm. If it was a windy the 6th of August, the coming June would become windy, and so on…

My Spanish teacher tells me that “cusquenas” (people from Cusco) generally are both Catholics and pagan believers. Therefore their traditions are both bound to pachamama (mother earth) and Christ. For instance do all the mountains have a cross on top. Another one is that August used to be celebrated to honour mother earth and therefore citizen of today still decorate their houses with yellow flowers during this month. This is also seen on some altars during Sundays.

The Incas was very advanced in water technology. Their way of leading water down to town is still working. In each street there were a fresh-water channel running outside the houses. You could still see the channels, but the water is hard to keep clean today since there are much more waste in the world. But my Spanish teacher told me that in Cusco the municipality has began to work for improved water sewage.