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Irrigation at Teotihuacān

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

René F. Millon
René F. Millon*
Affiliation:
Columbia UniversityNew York, N.Y.
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Extract

The role played by irrigation in the development of civilization in Mesoamerica has never been satisfactorily determined. Steward (1949: 12-13, 17) has assumed that it played a role in Mesoamerica similar to that which it played in the development of the earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, north China, and coastal Peru. In each of these other areas the first urban civilizations to develop were in regions requiring the control of water for the cultivation of crops, and the necessity for this control is generally accepted as having provided the basis for the development of these urban class societies. Yet in Mesoamerica the matter has actually never been established one way or the other. Armillas (1948: 109) states that rainfall is sufficient today during the rainy season in the highlands of central Mexico in general, and the Valley of Mexico in particular, to produce a crop of maize without irrigation, but that irrigation is necessary for the production of an additional crop in any year.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , October 1954 , pp. 177 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1954

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