Many civilizations must adapt to the elements of the environment in order to survive. The Incas exceeded survival and were able to thrive throughout the many regions of their empire. Machu Picchu was one in a series of royal estates built in the Urubamba Valley on the Inca Empire’s eastern region. The mountain peaks, rise

to the north and south, while the Urubamba river, runs along the valley floor more than 1500 feet below. The city of Cuzco is a fertile land for agriculture, well watered by the many streams fed by glacial snows. The valley lies at a lower, warmer altitude than the Inca capital of Cuzco, which provided an escape from the June-through-August Andean winters but resulted in little to no rainfall. The Incas also settled on the coastal center of Pachacamac where they were able to utilize the warm, dry weather for growing crops utilizing the runoff of the mountain waters efficiently. Their land rises from coastal desert into the world’s second highest mountain range in the world (Cock, Insert).

History provides us with an understanding of how man has come to adapt to his environment and he is ever changing with the elements. The Incas provide us with an insight on how they where able to live with such an array of environmental changes. The environmental adaptations and impacts of the Incas still echo in the traditional technologies used in some regions of Latin America and in the continual efforts to use technology to benefit from the physical environment and avoid hazards. Many Geographers have pointed to the ways in which overuse of their environment contributed to the collapse of the Inca society and warn that this implies for current patterns of widespread deforestation, overuse of the land, and depletion of water resources (Martson, Knox, Liverman 17). We must learn from the mistakes of the Incas and be willing to implement their technologies but making them adaptable f

Some topics in this essay:
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