05: Hohokam: Engineers and Farmers

Agriculture in the Sonoran Desert requires an irrigation system because of the low annual rainfall.  Beginning in 450 C.E., Hohokam families diverted water into cultivated fields.  300 years later, due to population growth, the Hohokam united to create multi-village irrigation cooperatives.  As a result, canal infrastructure expanded which increased farmland, and led to even greater population growth.  Ultimately, it grew into the largest canal system in prehistoric North America, delivering water to land as far as twenty miles away from the river.