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The Chimu Empire of ancient South America in the time period between 900–1480 CE dominated the north Peruvian coast from the Santa to the Lambeyeque Valleys west of the Andean Cordilera Negra mountain range. This region, in terms of present‐day geographical locations, extended just north of the Peruvian capital city of Lima to the Ecuadorian border and eastward from the Pacific Ocean coast to the eastern slopes of the Andes. From the central administrative center at Chan Chan in the Moche Valley, successive generations of Chimu rulers exercised political and economic control of adjacent valleys through administrative centers charged with overseeing and maximizing agricultural production and development. Within the territorial domain of the empire, many of the westward‐running rivers leading runoff water from highland Andean rainfall collection zones to fertile coastal fluvial valleys were intercepted and redistributed through extensive canal distribution systems to irrigate...

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© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York

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Ortloff, C.R. (2008). Water Management in Peru. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_9458

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_9458

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

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