People often argue that Global Warming isn’t real, but no one actually argues that Global Warming is a good thing. Until Now. An international team of researchers reported in the current issue of the journal, Climate to the Past, that a 400-year warm spell helped the ancient Inca to build the largest empire to ever exist in the Americas.
Beginning in about 1100 A.D., the increase in temperature served as a “perfect incubator” for the Inca’s expansion, allowing them to develop better methods of agriculture, creating a surplus of maize and potatoes, which freed much of the population to build a large army, road networks, and even Machu Picchu.
“Climate warming does not always have to be a negative issue. Our research shows that it can favor societal development,” lead author Alex Chepstow-Lusty, a palaeoecologist from the French Institute for Andean Studies in Lima, Peru, told Discovery News.
Peru, considered the third most threatened country in the world by climate change, needs to restore the vast areas of abandoned terraces and canal systems, build reservoirs, and focus its attention on massive scale native reforestation of the Andes, according to Chepstow-Lusty.
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