The Mayan civilization perhaps owes its greatness to its fishing skills and formidable traps.

Corn and fresh fish. These two ingredients surely contributed greatly to the development and greatness of the Mayan civilization. Around 2600 BC, populations of men settled in Central America, in what corresponds today to Belize and Guatemala, in particular. There, they developed techniques and cultures to sustain themselves and survive.

For many years, corn cultivation has been well known to researchers interested in this period of humanity. But to feed thousands of people, the Mayans could not be satisfied with this plant.

Archaeologists from the University of New Hampshire have discovered that the Mayans also devised a system for catching lots of fish to feed all mouths. A discovery that experts explained in a study published in Science Advances and relayed by ARS Technica.

Fish traps built at the beginning of the Mayan civilization

Using drones and satellite images found on Google Earth, Eleanor Harrison-Buck, the study's lead author, and her colleagues were able to map 108 kilometers of ancient canals and pools located in what is now the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary, Belize. This map immediately made them think of fish traps built several centuries later in Bolivia.

By analyzing sediments from the bottom of Belize's canals, researchers found that they were at least 4,000 years old. This tends to demonstrate that the first Mayans settled there dug canals to enclose fish during the dry season. An ingenuity that could have fed up to 15,000 people per year.

True engineers of the past

The principle of this type of trap is now well known. It is also still used in certain parts of the world, notably in Zambia. The networks of canals and ponds in the marshes make it possible to accommodate a large number of fish during the rainy season.

They then come and lay their eggs there. When the water decreases, the fish then try to escape through the canals to the large rivers. They actually end up in ponds, from which they can no longer escape as the water continues to flow down the canals. The men then just have to pick them up.

To make these traps, the Mayans had to build canals and significantly change the landscape. A job that clearly did not scare them at the beginning of civilization. To build their corn fields too, these men had profoundly changed their environment, notably by draining entire hectares of land.