You Say Phoenix and I Say Phoenicia

The first stop on our tour along the 33rd parallel is the metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, located at 33 degrees 30 minutes latitude. Gleaming like a steel and glass mirage surrounded by ironwood, palo verde, and saguaro cactus, this modern American city lies in a brown cloud of auto exhaust at the northern end of the Sonoran Desert. Its imported palm trees and omnipresent swimming pools shimmer when seen from high in the air like turquoise and silver jewelry on a jet-setter’s tanned breast. In essence, Phoenix is pervaded with the aura of the foreign and the bizarre. Few casual tourists realize, however, that this was once the center of the ancient Hohokam culture.

The largest Hohokam site known as Snaketown was located about five miles north of the exact 33 degrees line, while the ruins of the astronomical observatory called Casa Grande still rest about five miles south of the line. The Hohokam inhabited the Valley of the Sun perhaps as early as 300 B.C. (about the time of Alexander the Great and the Ptolemaic Dynasties in Egypt) and built one of the world’s most extensive irrigation systems. These ancient American Indians created an estimated total of 500 miles of canals to irrigate over 25,000 acres in the Phoenix Basin-- all constructed with mere digging sticks, stone implements, and woven carrying baskets. In fact, no wheelbarrows or draft animals were ever used. The main canals leading from the Salt and Gila rivers measured up to 75 feet across at the top and 50 feet wide at the bottom. [6] As Southwestern archaeologist H. M.

 Wormington observes, “The scope of the canal project suggests comparisons with the erection of the huge pyramids of Egypt or the great temples of the Maya.” [7] Clearly this monumental technology was the key factor that allowed the desert dwelling people to inhabit their extremely harsh region for well over a thousand years.

Skipping across the Atlantic on the same parallel, we find a number of intriguing sites in the Old World. For instance, at a latitude of 33 degrees 19 minutes was located the primary Phoenician seaport of Tyre (now called Sûr), almost 50 miles south of Beirut. Dating back as early as 5000 B.C., Tyre was renowned for a purple-red dye obtained from the snails of the genus Murex. [8] The color is one of the meanings of the word “phoenix,” which the ancient Egyptians sometimes associated with the purple heron.

Back in North America the “place of the heron” refers to Aztlan, the Nahuatl word for the mythical land that the Aztecs inhabited after emerging from Chicomostoc, the Seven Caves located in the bowels of the earth. [9] Chicano folklore identifies Aztlan as that portion of Mexico taken over by the U.S. after the Mexican-American War of 1846-- in part, the Arizona Territory, where the settlement of Phoenix arose.