Ancient Central Americans built a massive fishing system

Beginning about 4,000 years ago, an elaborate fishing system fed the growing human population in the Central American lowlands, a new study finds. The discovery of this massive construction project indicates that aquatic foods at least partially supported the rise of the Maya civilization roughly a millennium later.

Zigzagging across wetlands in what is now the nation of Belize, an ancient network of earthen channels poured fish and other aquatic food into pools that formed when the waters receded in the spring and early summer, says archaeologist Eleanor Harrison-Buck of the University of New Hampshire. in Durham and colleagues. Fish trapped in those ponds may have fed an average of about 15,000 people a year, researchers conclude Nov. 22 in. Advances in science.

Scientists say many people probably didn’t congregate near fish traps until the emergence of large ceremonial and urban Maya centers about 3,000 years ago.SN: 6/3/20).

Harrison-Buck’s team used a camera-mounted drone and Google Earth imagery to uncover 167 shallow channels covering nearly 42 square kilometers in Belize’s Crooked Tree Wildlife Refuge. Mapped during the height of the summer dry season in 2017, nearly 60 ponds appeared near the intersecting canals.

Radiocarbon dating of material from three excavated trenches indicates that hunter-gatherers first built the fish trap structure around 4,000 years ago. Geologic evidence of a drought from about 4,200 to 3,900 years ago indicates that the area turned from a year-round marshland to a seasonal swamp at that time, prompting a dietary shift from cultivated maize to aquatic foods (SN: 13.12.18).

No signs of corn pollen appeared in the trench excavations. Ancient menus in this region included fish, turtles, molluscs, waterfowl and the edible seeds of amaranth plants that grow well in open landscapes during drought, scientists suspect.

Maya villagers harvested the aquatic bounty of the fish trap system from about 3,200 to 1,800 years ago, researchers say. An excavated canal led directly to a major Maya center, Chau Hiix.

Future fieldwork will investigate the remains of pre-Mayan settlements near the fishing system. The researchers will also investigate potential channel networks identified by remote sensing in two other wetlands in Belize and one in southern Mexico.