Inca terraces at Moray, Peru

85 points · 9 comments · view on lemmy.world

9 Comments

Quilotoa@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 198d (3 replies)

You don't really get a sense of size, but these terraces are huge.

Atelopus-zeteki@fedia.io · 10 pts · 198d (1 reply)

If one zooms in, it's possible to see the guy standing on the second level up, between 9 & 10 o'clock. He's holding a banana, and so it's easy to get a sense of scale.

Lemming6969@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 198d

Seeing him actually made it smaller to me. These circles are only about 200-300 feet wide on the map.

SpruceBringsteen@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 198d

That's pretty much the story everywhere you go in Peru. You're going to spend a lot of time trying (and failing) to grasp the size of things.

Everywhere around the Sacred Valley you look up these massive cliffs and there's terraces. Terraces all over. Incans terraformed their mountains on an industrial scale, Moray is pretty much just an agrilab in a much larger project.

Thisiswritteningerman@midwest.social · 7 pts · 198d (4 replies)

Zooming in, there's people and stairs in that photo. Helps quite a bit with scale

SpruceBringsteen@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 198d (3 replies)

It's big enough to get large temperature variances in a relatively small space

Not only could you grow a wider range of crops in it, but you can see how much easier it would be to study your crops and agricultural practices when growing in it.

Thisiswritteningerman@midwest.social · 5 pts · 198d (1 reply)

Based on local sun/shade from other terrain, wind exposure, and changes in altitude across the levels?

SpruceBringsteen@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 198d

Yup. These terraces also have tons of stone/gravel under the surface so they're like big thermal batteries too. Important because this site is pretty high up in elevation.

PugJesus@piefed.social · 3 pts · 198d

Fascinating! I had no clue!