We live on the remains of the dead

Large areas of the huge Phoenix/Mesa Metroplex are built on the ruins of the ancient inhabitants. It is not well known today, but many of the strip centers and houses that make up this huge city are literally built on Hohokam towns and villages. The vast canal system of the Salt River Valley has its origins in canals built by wood and stone tools hundreds of years ago. There are still places in the Valley you can see traces of the original canals and even see some of the ruins.

The picture above is the corner of one of the largest remaining Hohokam structures in Phoenix. It is maintained as part of Pueblo Grande, a Museum and Archaeological Park by the City of Phoenix.

No one really knows what the ancient inhabitants of the Southwest called themselves. The names we use like Hohokam, Sinagua and Anazasi, are merely convenient terms used by archaeologists and borrowed from other American Indian languages or Spanish. The term Hohokam was borrowed from the Akimel O'odham, and is used to define an archaeological culture that existed from the beginning of the current era to about the middle of the 15^th century AD. Wikipedia.

We have been visiting Pueblo Grande from time to time for many years. The present park and museum are really well done. The ruins now lie next to a freeway and just north of the Salt River where airplanes make their landing run into Sky Harbour Airport. It is really difficult to imagine the isolation and quietness that must have existed when these structures were inhabited. The City of Phoenix gets its name from the legend of the Phoenix bird that arose from its own ashes. Early settlers realized that the valley had once been densely populated and that the town they were building was rising literally on the ashes of the vanished civilization.