[rusk]

Thank you. The other thing I really wanted to know was why they were arranged in mounds/quilt? I’m guessing it relates to irrigation

[alephnerd]

My hunch (based on how my grandfather would cultivate) was to provide a mount of fertilizer for added nitrogen along with the added irrigation aspects.

It's surprising ("I'm shocked, shocked, well not that shocked") how this style of farming somehow made it all the way to my ancestral village for cultivating these New World crops.

Gotta love proto-globalization.