Highly Skillful Engineering: Who Taught The Inca How To Build Artificially Irrigated Garden?

A. Sutherland - AncientPages.com - The Tipón waterworks stand out because their hydraulic engineering is combined with thoughtful and extremely skilled environmental design. In all of Tawantinsuyu, or the “Land of the Four Quarters” as the Inca called their empire, no other place has agricultural terraces and irrigation channels as well planned and carefully built as those in the Tipón complex.

Tipón - monumental fountain. Tipón - home to one of the largest irrigation works in terraces, with many outdoor water channels. Image credit: Khan (IT) - CC BY-SA 4.0 

Tipón stands as a breathtaking testament to prehistoric civil engineering. Spanning 500 acres, this walled Inca settlement was an estate for Inca nobility.
Long before Columbus set foot in the Americas, this marvel thrived as a seamlessly integrated system.

Located just 13 miles down the Huatanay River Valley from the Inca capital of Cusco, Tipon’s striking main feature is a group of 13 large, connected, central terraces that descend a former ravine; these terraces were made by impressive, carefully built stone walls thought to be among the finest in all of Peru.

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