Guano — the Andean seabird manure the Inca state rationed by law

Centuries before Europe fought over cargoes of it, the fertiliser later called guano was a regulated Andean resource. Garcilaso describes seabird-dung islands off the Peruvian coast allotted province by province, bounded with markers, and worked under a fixed quota enforced on pain of death, with the nesting birds protected the same way; Acosta gives the white dung-hills seen from the sea, the boats that went out for nothing else, and the word Guano itself. Read from the page.