Gone with the Flow: Ancient Andes canals irrigated farmland

Archaeologists working in a valley on the western slopes of Peru’s Andes mountains have discovered the earliest known irrigation canals in South America, a find that illuminates the origins of large-scale agriculture in the New World.

WATERED DOWN. In Peru’s Zana Valley, stones and other remnants of 6,000-year-old huts (left arrow) lie near buried irrigation canals (right arrow).