The Inka Empire: What Innovations Can Provide Food and Water for Millions?
The Inka Empire: What Innovations Can Provide Food and Water for Millions?
What Innovations Can Provide Food and Water for Millions?
Use this lesson to teach and learn about the Inka Empire that thrived in South America in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Investigate how the need to feed and provide water for millions of people across a vast territory led to Inka innovations in water management and agriculture. Find out how these innovations are still in use today by Indigenous communities in the Andes.
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Use this lesson to teach and learn about the Inka Empire that thrived in South America in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.Investigate how the need to feed and provide water for millions of people across a vast territory led to Inka innovations in water management and agriculture. Find out how these innovations are still in use today by Indigenous communities in the Andes.
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Lesson Information


Grades:

5–8

Nations:

Aymara, Quechua

Subjects:

Economics, Environmental Science, Geography, History, STEM

Keywords:

Inka, innovation, engineering, ancient civilizations of South America, water management, agriculture, sustainability

Regions:

South America


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Essential Understandings


Framework for Essential Understandings about American Indians
NMAI’s Essential Understandings reveal key concepts about the rich and diverse cultures, histories, and contemporary lives of Native peoples. Woven throughout the lesson, the following Essential Understandings provide a foundation for students to thoughtfully approach the complexity of the Inka Empire. The Essential Understandings directly correlate to the National Council of the Social Studies’ ten themes that form a framework for social studies standards.
This resource addresses the following Essential Understandings:
Essential Understanding 3:
People, Places, and Environments

For thousands of years, indigenous people have studied, managed, honored, and thrived in their homelands. These foundations continue to influence American Indian relationships and interactions with the land today.

Essential Understanding 7:
Production, Distribution, and Consumption

American Indians developed a variety of economic systems that reflected their cultures and managed their relationships to others. Prior to European arrival in the Americas, American Indians produced and traded goods and technologies using well-developed system of trails and widespread transcontinental, intertribal trade routes. Today, American Indian tribes and individuals are active in economic enterprises that involve production and distribution.

Essential Understanding 8:
Science, Technology, and Society

American Indian knowledge resides in languages, cultural practices, and teaching that spans many generations. This knowledge is based on long-term observation, experimentation, and experience with the living earth. Indigenous knowledge has sustained American Indian cultures for thousands of years. When applied to contemporary global challenges, Native knowledge contributes to dynamic and innovative solutions.

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Academic Standards


Common Core State Standards
STANDARDS
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.1:
Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.1:
Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.7:
Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.
College, Career & Civic Life–C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards
STANDARDS
D2.Geo.2.6-8:
Use maps, satellite images, photographs, and other representations to explain relationships between the locations of places and regions, and changes in their environmental characteristics.
D2.Geo.3.6-8:
Use paper based and electronic mapping and graphing techniques to represent and analyze spatial patterns of different environmental and cultural characteristics.
D2.Geo.4.6-8:
Explain how cultural patterns and economic decisions influence environments and the daily lives of people in both nearby and distant places.
D2.Geo.5.6-8:
Analyze the combinations of cultural and environmental characteristics that make places both similar to and different from other places.
D2.Geo.6.6-8:
Explain how the physical and human characteristics of places and regions are connected to human identities and cultures.
D2.Geo.9.6-8:
Evaluate the influences of long-term human-induced environmental change on spatial patterns of conflict and cooperation.
D2.His.3.6-8:
Use questions generated about individuals and groups to analyze why they, and the developments they shaped, are seen as historically significant.
D2.His.16.6-8:
Organize applicable evidence into a coherent argument about the past.
D2.Eco.1.6-8:
Explain how economic decisions affect the well-being of individuals, businesses, and society.
D2.Eco.3.3-5:
Identify examples of the variety of resources (human capital, physical capital, and natural resources) that are used to produce goods and services.
D2.Eco.7.6-8:
Analyze the role of innovation and entrepreneurship in a market economy.
National Science Education Standards
STANDARDS
E1.1:
Abilities of Technological Design, including evaluate completed technological designs and products; communicate the process of technological design.
F5.4:
Science and Technology in Local Challenges, including science and engineering work in many different settings.
Next-Generation Science Standards
STANDARDS
Practice 2:
Developing and using models.
Practice 6:
Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering).
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The Meaning of Innovation

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How does innovation look different depending on the context of place and time? Watch the introductory video animation “Inka Innovative Engineers—Food and Water for Millions,” featuring two middle-school students. The video sets the stage for learning about the Inka and their accomplishments in water management and agriculture.

Food and Water for Millions

Food and Water for Millions
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The Inka Empire

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In less than one hundred years, from 1438 to 1533, the Inka built Tawantinsuyu, which means "the four parts together” in Quechua. The Inka Empire grew from a small kingdom in the highlands of Peru to become the largest empire in the Americas. Access the sections on the right to learn about the geography, ways of living, and history of the Inka Empire.

Additional Sources

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Additional Sources

The Inka Empire-Tawantinsuyu Essay: Offering additional background and content.

Resistance and Adaptation: Images, videos, and text showcasing the resiliency of Inka descendant cultures in the Andes today.

The Inka Empire’s Impact on the World: Inka foods, minerals, medicines, and engineering and how they affected our world.

Inka Innovation in Masonry: 3D viewer interactives showcasing Inka innovations in stone work

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The Importance of Water Management

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The Inka understood advanced concepts of water engineering and were able to channel rainfall and snowmelt from the Andes effectively. Terraces created level growing plots that resisted erosion. Parts of the original Inka water management infrastructure are still used by contemporary towns in the Andes today.
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Feeding an Empire

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The Inka employed innovative techniques to feed millions of people across the empire. They managed a vast system in diverse climatic conditions to produce food staples, including hundreds of varieties of corn, quinoa, and potato. People living near the coast based their diet on fresh seafood and fruits. Inka families raised guinea pigs for their meat and also ate the meat of llamas. Storage facilities called colca held surplus crops, dried meat, and other supplies.
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What Innovations Can Provide Food and Water for Millions?

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How can we use innovation to tackle difficult problems and find solutions to challenging situations? What innovations did you learn about that served to feed and provide water to the diverse population of the vast Inka Empire? Use the interactive digital news-article generator, The Andean Messenger, to make an evidence-based argument that can answer the question: What Innovations Can Provide Food and Water for Millions?
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Taking Informed Action

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Take informed action by investigating your own local community’s efforts of reciprocity (e.g., food banks; waterway and community cleanups; water conservation efforts; soup kitchens; homeless shelters) and find ways to participate. Compare your community’s efforts with ayni, or the Andean style of reciprocity.
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