ABSTRACT
Sometime 4000 years ago in the Sonoran Desert of the present-day southwest United States and northern Mexico, someone planted what probably was the first maize (corn) in North America; this is
sometime after the earliest domesticated maize was planted south of this region somewhere in Mexico between 6250-59,000 years before the current era (BCE) (Jaenicke-Despres et al., 2003). Later, the people of this Sonoran region would build elaborate irrigation canals that spanned more than 73,000 km2. The Hohokam knew enough about the cycles and dynamics of
the Sonoran Desert to sustain year-round agriculture. The Hohokam had learned how to effectively separate crops to keep bees from cross-pollinating unintended flowers, they knew to rotate crops to avoid soil exhaustion, and they knew-criticallythat their irrigated fields had to be drained to avoid them from salinizing. Anthropologists Suzanne and Paul Fish comment on the
remarkable resilience of Hohokam society:
Indeed, avoiding salinization is a notable feat in itself. Salinization of soil is one factor early civilizations, such as Mesopotamia, had to deal with in the face of rising populations and fluctuating climatic trends that were, in conjunction with administrative/political failure, responsible for civilization collapse in the Near East. The Hohokam built ball courts, “Great Houses” (large intricate
buildings), and platform mounds like pyramids that all indicate a complex society had grown around the rivers of the Sonoran Desert, and then later had spread out to upland areas of present day Arizona, e.g. Flagstaff. Yet, the Hohokam did this all without a steep hierarchy. No gravesites have ever been found that indicate steep inequality, authoritarian rulers, or even a bureaucracy. They did not develop a state that, in other arid societies of the world, evolved around control of irrigation as a way to control the population (Worster, 1985).
