Environment: Reviving Inca Waterways

In Peru, archaeologists restore an ancient means of irrigation

Fifty miles to the southeast stood Cuzco, the administrative capital of the 15th century Inca Empire and, to the Incas, "the navel of the world." Just over the granite slopes to the northwest lay Machu Picchu, a templed citadel so shrouded by mountains and mystery that no white man found it until 1911. Patallacta was between the two on a stone-paved Inca highway, part of the Royal Road that climbed and twisted more than 5,000 miles through the Andes. The town, with its 115 dwellings...

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