Incas: The Original Bioengineers

An ancient culture that prepped for climate change over 500 years ago

Archeological site of Moray near Cusco, Peru

Who doesn’t like mixing work and pleasure? Most of us would never miss an opportunity to go on a work-sponsored trip and mix in some fun activities. In my case, it’s the other way around: I travel for leisure, yet I always try to learn about the local biodiversity as well as people’s relationships with their environment when I’m in a new location. Why? Because that’s what keeps me from becoming too dogmatic and stuck in my ways—a common peril for those who carry loaded titles such as “PhD” on our shoulders.

This time around, I am visiting Peru. This country is a gold mine for a biology nerd like me: it is one of the so-called megadiverse countries home to 70% of the planet's biodiversity, thanks to its large size and variable geography. Peru stands out not only in terms of natural resources but also for its rich history of agricultural technology. This area was one of humanity’s cradles of crop domestication, which began over 7000 years ago in the Lake Titicaca region.

Farming is considered one of the crucial factors that prompted the rise of the earliest civilizations. The Peru region was no exception. It was the seat of one of the most impressive civilizations—the Incan Empire that stretched from modern-day Colombia to Santiago in Chile. Arguably, its successful expansion could be attributed, in part, to advanced agriculture, which helped its people survive and thrive in the harsh terrain of the Andean mountains. This resilience and productivity of the food production system established by the Incas was made possible thanks to research done over 500 years ago at a place called Moray.  

A lab in the clouds

Moray is an archeological site that is not easy to get to. Sure, you could hire private transport to take you there from Cusco. But if you are like me, you don’t seek easy ways. My day trip to Moray took almost eight hours and involved five different kinds of transport, including a collectivo (minibus) stuffed to the brim with women wearing tall hats and carrying bundles of traditional textiles in their colorful blankets, brightly chattering in Quechua.

But this trip was worth it. Although I had seen photos of this place, being there added layers of context to the uniqueness of Moray. Situated at nearly 12,000 feet, the site is located on an arid plateau overlooking the fertile Urubamba River valley below and crowned by sharp, glacier-covered peaks. There, obscured by the beige hills, lay the enigmatic terraces of Moray.

The perfect geometry of concentric circles looks striking in the photos that decorate tourist brochures, and even more so when you get close enough to appreciate their scale. The largest circle has a diameter of 600 feet. There are 15 tiers of them, each about over 6 feet tall, which descend in a funnel-like pattern. It takes about 20 minutes to walk around the perimeters of the area, and each direction offers stunning vistas. But what is even more impressive than the views is the scientific research that took place here. 

Farming seems inconceivable in this barren, high-mountain terrain, with the air rare and crisp even in the heat of the afternoon. Yet, this place was where hundreds of varieties of crops were once cultivated and adapted to withstand cool temperatures and dry climate. Moray served as an agricultural laboratory where Incan researchers (I’m not going to shy away from using the word because this is exactly what they were) tested out different crops for their ability to tolerate adversity and provide high nutritional value.

They built this impressive site in the exact shape and orientation to create an open-air greenhouse, complete with an engineered irrigation system. The circular terraces that funneled down into narrowing concentric circles absorbed different amounts of solar energy and released the heat at night to prevent freezing, which is common at this altitude. This created unique microclimates on each tier of the terrace, with temperatures varying as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit from top to bottom. This configuration allowed Incan plant scientists to acclimate warm-weather crops to grow at increasingly lower temperatures, as well as test them in different types of soil that were imported here from distant parts of the empire.

Resilience in diversity

Many archeologists have puzzled over why the Moray laboratory was built here, above the fertile plains of the Urubamba River, a region known as the Sacred Valley. The Sacred Valley provided bountiful food for the inhabitants of the Incas’ capital, Cusco, enough to supply their armies with and some extra to store away. However, the Incan Empire stretched for almost 4,000 kilometers and spanned many different climates, from jungles to alpine deserts. The people of the Andes learned to work with what they had: growing food on the steep, dry, sometimes snow-covered mountains that receive intense UV radiation and almost no precipitation for six months out of the year.

They did this with mastery. They converted the mountain slopes into arable land by building reinforced terraces that collected water and retained fertile soil during the rainy season. Their intimate knowledge of agriculture allowed the Incas to cultivate over 1000 kinds of potatoes and 250 kinds of corn. Not only were these rainbow-colored varieties more nutritious, but some of the crops developed by Incan plant scientists were also drought- and cold-resistant. This diversity made their farming practices a lot more resilient to the year-to-year weather fluctuations that are common in the harsh climate of the Andes.

Planning for a rainy day

There was no single prize-winning potato that the Incas favored above others. Instead, they cultivated genetic diversity through crossbreeding and natural selection. Today, however, we seem to chase the idea that we can develop a “perfect strain” that combines high nutritional qualities, taste, productivity and resistance to disease.

Since Monsanto launched its first genetically modified “super-potato” in 1996, increasing yield has been the main focus of crop engineers, often at the expense of variety. This has led to intermittent potato shortages in recent years. But unlike the Incas who were worried about frostbite, today’s potato growers’ biggest problem is the rising heat.

Luckily, we have the tools to address this problem. Biotechnology makes the process of developing new varieties of plants much easier with tools such as CRISPR gene editing at our disposal and even makes it possible to engineer species with never-before-seen functions, like glow-in-the-dark petunias or house plants that purify air of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

Some biotech companies such as Pairwise and Vivent, as well as academic researchers, are working on developing drought-resistant crops. But if the near-extinction of bananas has anything to teach us, it is that we should not focus so much on solving one problem at a time but rather try to diversify our strategies for a variety of uncertain futures.

Climate change effects include not only heat and droughts but also the opposite problems like hurricanes, wildfires (with smoke blocking the sun vital for plant growth) and polar vortexes. Add to that plant diseases, pests, and supply chain disruptions—there is a myriad of things that could go wrong with our food production systems, and we need to be prepared to respond to those by not becoming too dogmatic in our thinking and approach. The best advice is to follow the Incan wisdom: plan for the unexpected and don’t put all your potatoes in one basket.