Barter and Hierarchy: A Practical Perspective on Food, Society, and Knowledge in the Inca Empire

Abstract

The Inca Empire developed a sophisticated food production system, social organisation, and knowledge transmission without money or writing. The article introduces the concept of a barter economy structured through hierarchical cooperation and examines the Inca model from a practice-based (heuristical) perspective.

The article contains eight pages and two figures. It is basically a research essay towards a more complex and systemic economic model that is being developed and published in the near future