Andes in 1532: Spanish invasion

Andean domestication is foundational to world food history. Quechua and Aymara remain millions-strong with regional variation. Catholic festivals often carry Andean mountain devotion underneath. Extractive economies shape migration and ritual calendars still. Indigenous Americas; high-altitude diversity; trade-routes.

Colonial casta systems were social law — not biology we endorse. Highland and coastal societies intensify. Moche, Nazca, Tiwanaku and others flourish. Inca expansion builds roads and admin. Rebellion reopens indigenous politics. New states inherit unequal land regimes. Land and language politics intensify.

Constitutions and movements gain ground. Cities remix highland identity and pop. Communities farmed multiple altitudes like a vertical archipelago of fields. Statecraft later scaled those exchanges into roads and storehouses. Colonial reducciones remade settlement. Andean Spanish carries substrate patterns.