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Word: patallacta (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
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...southeast stood Cuzco, the administrative capital of the 15th century Inca Empire and, to the Incas, "the navel of the world." Just over the granite slopes to the northwest lay Machu Picchu, a templed citadel so shrouded by mountains and mystery that no white man found it until 1911. Patallacta was between the two on a stone-paved Inca highway, part of the Royal Road that climbed and twisted more than 5,000 miles through the Andes. The town, with its 115 dwellings guarded by a hilltop fortress, probably served as "a pit stop for Incas traveling between Cuzco...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Environment: Reviving Inca Waterways | 9/28/1981 | See Source »

Today the land around Patallacta is powder-dry and barren. Fifteen families barely scratch a living from the soil, and almost nothing can be grown for the entire five-month dry season. How, then, did this unforgiving land once provide for so many people? The answer is etched into the granite hills around the valley: dozens of stone canals snake their way down from glacier-fed streams in the upper altitudes...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Environment: Reviving Inca Waterways | 9/28/1981 | See Source »

...overflowing or bursting through the stonework. Maintenance teams had to patrol the waterways year-round to keep them clear of silt and rubble. In the 16th century the Spanish came, dreaming of El Dorado, and forced farmers to harvest gold instead of maize. Irrigation systems like the one in Patallacta were let go. Soldiers and farmers moved away. The canals were all but forgotten...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Environment: Reviving Inca Waterways | 9/28/1981 | See Source »

...plastic sheeting to canal beds, they have stuck to traditional Inca stoneworking techniques. So far they have managed to reirrigate only 30 acres. But even this small step forward-or backward-has begun to change some of the lives of the handful of farmers on the slopes around Patallacta. One peasant has requested and secured a $400 loan from Kendall to pay workers to fix a canal near his mountainside plot. "The fact that he would ask indicates the idea can be sold," says Kendall. "If you got 100 men to work three months together in rebuilding a system...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Environment: Reviving Inca Waterways | 9/28/1981 | See Source »

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