Inca Ruins at Moray, Peru. CC BY-NC-ND Chuck Burgess via flickr.
Circular stone terraces that were built into existing natural craters in the earth. The Inca Empire flowered between early 13th century and 1572 AD. However I haven’t found any precise dating of this site.
The site rediscovermachupicchu.com provides more information:
Experts consider Moray an experimental facility for crops. They say, the Incas planted wheat, quinoa, panti, grain and kantu flowers at Moray and they experimented with different altitudes and light intensities.
The deeper something was planted, the cooler it was down there… Each plant reacted differently to water and sunray quantities, as well as to temperature variations.
At deeper levels there were lower temperatures, thus simulating the high altitude conditions.
Temperature differences between the lower and higher levels are higher than you might think! The difference between the lowest and the highest levels can be up to 15 ºC (59 ºF). This is equal to the difference between sea level temperature and 1.000 m (2,380.8 ft) height level temperature.
