The Incas freeze-dried potatoes.

1438

Tubers were frozen on high-altitude nights, dried in the sun by day and squeezed out to make chuño, which keeps for years and fed the empire’s armies.

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The event

• Pachacuti founds the Inca Empirec. 1438 · Cusco. Pachacuti, ruler of Cusco, repelled the Chanka invasion and began turning a small kingdom into the empire of Tawantinsuyu. Within a century the Incas built the largest state of pre-Columbian America, with some 40,000 km of roads.

15th century

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