Note 54 — II. THE PREHISTORY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST

C. Daryll Forde, Habitat, Economy and Society (London, 1934), 35: “In Owen’s valley several groups took advantage of favourable conditions to irrigate patches of ground. The growth of bulbous plants and grasses is patently more luxuriant wherever abundant water reaches them, and this was achieved artificially by diverting from their narrow channels the snow-fed streams flowing down from the Sierra Nevada. In spring, before the streams rose with snow-melt, a dam of boulders, brushwood and mud was thrown across a creek where it reached the valley floor.... Above the dam one or two main ditches, sometimes more than a mile long, were laboriously cut with long poles to lead the river water out on the gently sloping ground over which it was distributed by minor channels.... After the harvest the main dam was pulled down.... There was, however, no attempt at planting or working the soil, and none of the cultivated plants grown to the south of the Colorado were known.”