Tropical lowlands that flood during the rainy season and scorch during the sunny season don’t exactly sound ideal for agriculture. But the people who lived in what is now Bolivia between 500 A.D. and 1400 A.D. turned those conditions to their advantage by engineering a system of canals to divert excess water and ponds to save it for later.
By building a sophisticated irrigation network, the pre-Hispanic Casarabe society of the Llanos de Moxos produced maize year-round — ushering in a Neolithic Revolution based on a single grain, according to a report in Nature. This finding contradicts earlier theories that a monoculture was not part of that area’s lifestyle.
