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> places like Arizona for millennia. Millennia? Do you have any references for this? AFAIK the natives did not do large scale irrigation, I'll be interested t
by seadan83 4y ago
> places like Arizona for millennia.
Millennia? Do you have any references for this?
AFAIK the natives did not do large scale irrigation, I'll be interested to know if that was the case.
Further, my understanding is that we are getting out a multi-hundred year wet period for California and the Southwest. Before then it was particularly arid, and we are returning to that and then some. Which is all really unfortunate as most of the concentrated population settling there has been since the 1800s, when the climate was maximally accommodating.
- AlotOfReading 4y agoYes, I used to work as an archaeologist in the southwest. Canal irrigation in the Santa Cruz watershed is found from the late archaic period (<2000 BCE), as a well-established example. Those networks remained mainly small regional networks until the Hohokam classic period, when they built massive canal networks irrigating tens of thousands of acres and sometimes draining entire rivers dry. Many of these later canals remain still in use today (in greatly modified states), like Phoenix's Grand Canal.