The Andes

Where it is

The Andes run the length of western South America, from the Caribbean coast of Colombia and Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego — the longest continental mountain range on Earth, and the second highest after the Himalaya. They are the product of the Nazca plate sliding beneath the South American plate, which is also why the range is volcanic and seismically active along most of its length. The important consequence for people is vertical: within a few tens of kilometres, and a few thousand metres, you can pass from coastal desert through temperate valleys to high grassland to permanent ice.

The land and water around it

• The altiplanoplateau

  A high plateau between the range's eastern and western cordilleras in southern Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, mostly above 3,500 metres. Cold, dry and treeless, it supports herding and hardy tubers rather than maize, and it holds Lake Titicaca.

• The Atacamadesert

  The coastal desert west of the range, among the driest places on Earth precisely because the Andes block moisture from the Amazon side. The mountains and the desert are one system.

• The Urubamba valleyriver

  A deep valley north-west of Cusco cutting from the highlands toward the Amazon basin. Its lower altitude and warmer climate made it agriculturally valuable, and Machu Picchu sits on a ridge above it.

Its history, in short

Andean societies organised themselves around that verticality rather than against it, farming several altitude bands at once so that a failure in one did not mean famine. The Inca state, in the fifteenth century, ran a very large territory across this terrain with a road network built for runners and llamas rather than wheels, and kept its records on knotted cords. Spanish conquest from 1532 arrived during an Inca civil war and after introduced epidemics had already killed enormous numbers of people, and rebuilt the political geography around silver — above all Potosí — and around a new coastal capital facing the sea route to Spain.

Timeline

Dates are shown on a timeline rather than as changing shapes on the map. The globe draws modern boundaries only, and tinting a modern outline to stand for a historical one would state something we cannot source.

Places that carry meaning

• CuscoPre-15th century onward

  The Inca administrative centre, rebuilt after the conquest with colonial churches and houses raised directly on Inca foundations. The masonry is visible at the base of many buildings — conquest recorded in a wall rather than in a document.

• Machu Picchu15th century

  A settlement on a ridge above the Urubamba, with fitted stonework and agricultural terracing. Its purpose is interpreted rather than known; a royal estate is the most widely held reading.

  The site's function — royal estate, religious centre, or a combination — is inferred from architecture, burials and Spanish-era documents. Specialists differ; the royal-estate interpretation is the most widely held rather than the settled one.

Learn the language here

1. 1Understand which languages are spoken hereThe Andes is multilingual. Start with which languages are used, by whom, and for what — the phrase list only covers one of them.Written by Globe Quest

Check yourself

• What is the Andean strategy of farming several altitude bands at once?

  An insurance system: a failure in one zone does not mean famine

  Holding fields and herds at different altitudes spreads risk across climates that fail independently.

• Why were Inca roads not built for wheeled vehicles?

  Stairways, switchbacks and the absence of draught animals made runners and llamas the better system

  Wheeled forms are known from Mesoamerican objects. In this terrain, with no draught animals, wheels solve nothing.

Worth arguing about

• 'No wheels, no writing' is often used to rank societies. What does the Andean case suggest about that habit?
• Machu Picchu was never lost to the people living near it. Who is 'discovery' a discovery for?

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