The Incas lived in one of the tallest mountains in the world yet they developed agriculture. To do so, they developed breeds of crops like potatoes and corn with the built of cisterns and irrigation canals that snaked and angled down from the mountains.
Egyptians agriculture was similar. The Egyptians had a dry poor soil, to develop agriculture they needed the Nile River. So they developed a system of irrigation that allowed them to use the Nile’s water for a series of purposes.