page_title: Foot plough
section_title: Andes
hierarchical_section_title: Foot plough / Andes
caption_attribution_description: Hatuncolla, pueblo de población Quechua, a 34 km de Puno y a unos 3 km de Sillustani. Altiplano peruano. 3.850 m s.n.m. Campecino demostrando la utilización de la Chakitaglia, instrumento típico utilizado para la labranza de la tierra. Autor: Alfredobi Fecha: Agosto 2006
context_page_description: The foot plough is a type of plough used like a spade with the foot in order to cultivate the ground.
context_section_description: The most advanced agricultural tool known in the New World before the coming of the Europeans was the Andean footplough, also known as the Chakitaqlla or simply taklla. It evolved from the digging stick and combined three advantages: metal point, curved handle, and footrest. No other indigenous tool utilized the pressure of the foot in digging up the sod which made it different from all farming implements known elsewhere in the Americas in pre-Columbian times. Although Chakitaqlla is a relatively simple instrument, it has persisted long after more sophisticated technology was introduced into the Central Andes, and its enduring presence demonstrates that more advanced innovations do not necessarily displace primitive forms that under certain conditions may be more efficient.
  Historic distribution and the current diversity of forms point to the mountainous region of Southern Peru as the likely place of origin of the chakitaqlla. With the expansion of the Inca Empire, the taklla was carried north to Ecuador and south to Bolivia where early colonial writings confirmed its presence. It probably never occurred in Southern Chile, either before or after the conquest by the Spaniards.
  It is probable, nevertheless, that agricultural peoples living on the Peruvian coast long before the Incas contributed to the idea of the taklla. Copper-shod digging sticks known by the Mochica culture (ca.500 A.D.) may have been a forerunner of the taklla. Pottery representations and remains of proto-taklla tools from the Chimu culture (1300 A.D) on the coast verifies its development by at least that time. However, the friable soils of the coastal desert were easily turned without the taklla, and the incentive to develop such a tool probably came from the adjacent Highlands.
  Men wielded the plow, called a chakitaqlla. It was made of a pole about 2 m long with a pointed end of wood or bronze, a handle or curvature at the top, and a foot rest lashed near the bottom.
  The Inca Emperor and accompanying provincial lords used foot ploughs in the "opening of the earth" ceremony at the beginning of the agricultural cycle. Incan agriculture used the chaki taklla or taklla, a type of foot plough.
  Chakitaqllas are still used by peasants farmers of native heritage in some parts of the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes. Modern chakitaqllas have a steel point.
caption: A farmer using the chaki taklla in the village of Hatunqulla, Puno Region, Peru
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