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
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.

Rough Draft: Emily Quist for Inca Agriculture
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. 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. Drainage canals and gravel floors in qollqa help to keep foodstuffs dry. Food could be stored for up to two years in these grainaries before spoiling due to the ventilation and drainage. 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. Mortar and pestles were used to grind up grains to be further used in cooking. Stone and clay stoves were used to cook foods over fires from either wood or llama dung. 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. 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. Quinoa was grown from about 2,300 meters to 3,900 meters. 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.

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. 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.

Emily Quist (talk) 02:20, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Food Security: A paragraph that is being revised and added to
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. 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. Drainage canals and gravel floors in qollqa help to keep foodstuffs dry. Food could be stored for up to two years in these grainaries before spoiling due to the ventilation and drainage. 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
Other technologies used to produce foodstuffs include many tools made with sharpened cobble stones, stone or clay. A mortar and pestle was used to grind up grains to be further used in cooking. Stone and clay stoves were used to cook foods over fires from either wood or llama dung. 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. Emily Quist (talk) 15:14, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Crops: A section that is being revised and added to
Copied from Incan Agriculture and edited

Staple crops from about 1,000 meters to 3,900 meters were potatoes. Quinoa was grown from about 2,300 meters to 3,900 meters. 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. 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. 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.

Animal Husbandry: an entire section being added
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. These animals included mainly llamas and alpacas, the dung of which was used to fertilize the crop fields. Llamas and alpacas were usually raised high up in the Andes, at 4,000 meters (13,000ft) and above. Hpdhw2 (talk) 19:47, 17 October 2017 (UTC)Llamas and alpacas were very important providing “wool, meat, leather, moveable wealth,” and “transportation.” The Inca also bred and domesticated ducks and guinea pigs as a source of meat. 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. Hpdhw2 (talk) 22:11, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Land Use: a paragraph being added
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. 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. 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. Hpdhw2 (talk) 05:50, 3 November 2017 (UTC) The Inca often irrigated these terraces by using water melting from nearby glaciers. The Inca transported this freshly melted water to crop fields by building irrigation canals to move the water and cisterns to store the water. 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. 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.

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)

Peer review: Post Questions or Suggestions here
- 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)
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)