Ancient Central Americans built a massive fish-trapping system
Earthen channels directed fish into ponds that formed seasonally, providing a dietary bounty for Maya civilizations starting around 4,000 years ago.
The fish-trapping network fed the expansion of early Maya centers
Faraway sensing techniques enabled researchers to discover a enormous fish-trapping network, including a pond (shown here) and earthen channels, constructed in Central The usa around Four,000 years ago.
Starting around Four,000 years ago, an elaborate fish-trapping system nourished expanding human populations in lowland Central The usa, a fresh learn about finds. The invention of this massive construction project indicates that aquatic foods as a minimum partly supported the rise of Maya civilization roughly a millennium later.
Zigzagging across wetlands in what’s now the nation of Belize, an ancient network of earthen channels funneled fish and other aquatic edibles into ponds that formed as flood waters receded within the spring and early summer, say archaeologist Eleanor Harrison-Buck of the University of New Hampshire in Durham and colleagues. Fish trapped in those ponds may maybe have fed an average of around 15,000 people once a year, the researchers conclude November 22 in Science Advances.
That many people probably did no longer assemble near the fish traps until the emergence of enormous Maya ceremonial and concrete centers around Three,000 years ago, the scientists say (SN: 6/Three/20).
Harrison-Buck’s team used a camera-mounted drone and Google Earth images to detect 167 shallow channels covering nearly 42 square kilometers in Belize’s Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary. Mapped at some point of the height of the summer dry season in 2017, nearly 60 ponds appeared near the crisscrossing channels.
Radiocarbon dating of material from three excavated channels indicates that hunter-gatherers to begin with constructed the fish-trapping setup around Four,000 years ago. Geological signs of a drought from about Four,200 to a pair of,900 years ago indicate that the realm turned from a year-round to seasonal marshland in the intervening time, spurring a dietary shift from cultivated maize to aquatic foods (SN: 12/13/18).
No signs of maize pollen turned up within the channel excavations. Ancient menus on this region included fish, turtles, mollusks, waterfowl and safe to eat seeds of amaranth vegetation that grow well on open landscapes at some point of droughts, the scientists suspect.
Maya villagers reaped the fish-trap system’s aquatic bounty from around Three,200 to 1,800 years ago, the researchers say. One excavated channel ran straight to a first-rate Maya center, Chau Hiix.
Future field work will probe for remains of pre-Maya settlements near the fish-trapping system. The researchers also will look into imaginable canal networks identified by far flung sensing at two other wetlands in Belize and one in southern Mexico.
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