Starting around 4,000 years ago, an elaborate fish-catching system fed a growing human population in the Central American lowlands, a new study finds. The discovery of this large-scale construction project indicates that aquatic foods at least partially supported the rise of the Maya civilization approximately 1,000 years later.
It zigzags across the wetlands of present-day Belize. An ancient earthen channel network funneled fish and other aquatic edibles into the ponds. Archaeologist Eleanor Harrison Buck of the University of New Hampshire, Durham and her colleagues say it was formed when flood waters receded in the spring and early summer. The fish trapped in these ponds could have fed an average of about 15,000 people a year, researchers concluded on November 22nd. scientific progress.
Scientists say that it is unlikely that so many people gathered near fish traps until the emergence of large-scale Mayan rituals and urban centers about 3,000 years ago (SN: 6/3/20).
Harrison Buck’s team used camera-equipped drones and Google Earth imagery to detect 167 shallow waterways covering approximately 42 square kilometers in Belize’s Crooked Tree Wildlife Refuge. When mapped during the height of the summer dry season in 2017, nearly 60 ponds appeared near intersecting waterways.
Radiocarbon dating of material from three excavated waterways shows that hunter-gatherers first built fishing facilities about 4,000 years ago. Geological signatures of a drought from about 4,200 to 3,900 years ago indicate that at the time the area changed from a year-round wetland to a seasonal wetland, prompting a change in diet from cultivated corn to aquatic foods. .SN: December 13, 2018).
There was no sign of corn pollen found in the ditch excavation. Scientists speculate that the region’s ancient menus may have included fish, turtles, molluscs, waterfowl, and edible seeds from an amaranth plant that thrives in open land during times of drought.
Researchers say Mayan villagers enjoyed the aquatic benefits of this trap system about 3,200 to 1,800 years ago. One of the excavated waterways led straight to Chau Hicks, a major Maya center.
Future field surveys will look for ruins of pre-Mayan settlements near the fishing system. The researchers also plan to investigate potential canal networks identified by remote sensing in two other wetlands in Belize and one in southern Mexico.
