A central thesis to explain the advent of sedentary pre-Columbian civilizations, such as the Mayan, is that of agricultural intensification. Focused on corn, it began about four thousand years ago, a few millennia after the domestication of this cereal. But this conception probably only tells part of the story. This is demonstrated by the work, published on November 22 in the American magazine Scientific advancessuggesting that extensive fishing systems may have helped sustain dense populations.
Eleanor Harrison-Buck of the University of New Hampshire in Durham and her colleagues observed canals in a protected wetland in Belize, the “Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary.” This region of the Yucatan Peninsula has been occupied by man for almost ten thousand years. It floods during the rainy season and still constitutes an important fishing area. The linear structures that run through it had been attributed to the Mayans, as an irrigation element for agriculture.
The study of November 22 demolishes this vision of things. Taking advantage of an extreme drought in 2019 that made these muddy environments easier to access on foot, Eleanor Harrison-Buck and her colleagues sampled several channels for analysis and dating. They reveal that these trenches largely predate the Mayan era: they would have been excavated almost four thousand years ago, at a time of climate desiccation that would have affected the entire northern hemisphere. They are the oldest example of a complex fishery on the American continent.
150 tons of fish per year
For the researchers, the zigzag structures would have allowed the fish to converge towards ponds that would have served as reservoirs during the dry season. “It could be that the hunter-gatherer-fisher population intensified their practice of catching fish in response to this drought event in the region that lasted between two and three hundred years.”we read in the studio.
Using drone images and Google Earth, researchers identified 906 channels in the reserve, totaling 643 kilometers. Taking into account the performance of similar structures, still used today in flood-prone areas of Zambia, they estimate that the populations that preceded the Mayans could have obtained 150 tons of fish per year. Enough to feed around 15,000 people, not during the most archaic period, but during the one that saw the rise of the Mayan civilization, which would have continued to take advantage of these fisheries.
You have 54.53% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
