Casarabe Irrigation System Identified in Bolivia
January 31, 2025
Casarabe Irrigation System Identified in Bolivia
January 31, 2025
Archaeological Institute of America
News January 31, 2025
Drainage canal, Llanos de Moxos, BoliviaAutonomous University of Barcelona
BARCELONA, SPAIN—According to a Science News report, the Casarabe people, who lived in what is now northern Bolivia between A.D. 500 and 1400, built a network of drainage canals and ponds so that they could produce two maize crops per year on the Amazonian savannas. Previous research had shown that the Casarabe consumed maize, tubers, squash, peanuts, and yams, but no evidence of agricultural fields had been found. Geoarchaeologist Umberto Lombardo of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and his colleagues examined satellite images of Casarabe territory, and identified clusters of human-made ponds. Deep canals moving away from the pond clusters were spotted through the use of lidar equipment mounted on drones. Analysis of soil samples taken from the edges of the canals and ponds contained maize phytoliths. Radiocarbon dating of the samples at one of the ponds indicates that it was used between about 1250 and 1550. “As the population grew and environmental pressures increased, perhaps they looked for more reliable and stable sources of proteins,” Lombardo said. “Maize could have offered that to some extent,” he concluded. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Nature. To read more about identifying Casarabe settlements using lidar, go to "Around the World: Bolivia."
https://archaeology.org/news/2025/01/31/casarabe-irrigation-system-identified-in-bolivia/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Engineered waterways helped Casarabe people turn savannas into year-round crop fields
By Bruce Bower
January 29, 2025 at 11:00 am
Water engineers in ancient South America turned seasonally flooded Amazonian savannas into hotbeds of year-round maize farming.
Casarabe people built an innovative, previously unrecognized network of drainage canals and water-storing ponds that enabled two maize harvests annually, say geoarchaeologist Umberto Lombardo of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and colleagues. Large-scale maize cultivation during rainy and dry parts of the year fed the rise of Casarabe urban sprawl across Amazonian forests and savannas in what’s now northern Bolivia, the scientists report January 29 in Nature.
Previous excavations dated Casarabe society, which covered an area of 4,500 square kilometers, to between the years 500 and 1400. Casarabe people had access to a variety of foods and crops, including maize, starchy tubers, squash, peanuts and yams. But investigators have found no evidence of Casarabe agricultural fields, raising questions about how farmers grew enough food to sustain a substantial population.
Maize planted around a pond and along the edge of a canal, as in this illustration, may have helped Casarabe people grow the crop all year long.
U. Lombardo et al/Nature 2025
Rather than exploiting a range of available crops, Casarabe people transformed savannas into maize-production centers, the researchers say. “As the population grew and environmental pressures increased, perhaps they looked for more reliable and stable sources of proteins,” Lombardo suggests. “Maize could have offered that to some extent.”
More:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/maize-farmers-amazonians-casarabe