Between 600 and 1,500 years ago, Indigenous people of the seasonally flooded savannas in the Bolivian Amazon created an advanced farming system that allowed them to grow corn throughout the year, according to a study published in Nature. These findings challenge what researchers know about early farming in South America. A team of researchers led by Umberto Lombardo from the Autonomous University of Barcelona found evidence that the Casarabe culture, whose people lived in the Llanos de Moxos region of Bolivia built an impressive network of drainage canals and artificial ponds between 500 CE and 1400 CE. This water management system worked with the natural seasonal changes of the Amazon Basin. During the rainy season, the Llanos de Moxos region would flood. To handle this, the Casarabe built drainage canals to remove excess water from their fields. These canals varied in size, according to the researchers. When the dry season arrived, the artificial ponds retained water, allowing farmers to irrigate their corn crops by hand. This meant they could grow corn year-round instead of just during certain seasons. “The pond itself is cultivated,” Lombardo told Mongabay. “So, the idea is that they had these ponds with the water in the middle, and the maize was cultivated on the edges of the pond.” Artwork of the ponds described in the study. Image by Julian Puig Guevara. The study suggests that the Casarabe culture represents an example of a “Neolithic Revolution” in the Amazon, with an economy based on grain production that…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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