Ancient fish-trapping network supported the rise of Maya civilization

Photo caption: The Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary is a biodiverse wetland in what’s now Belize—but the precursors of the Maya turned it into an industrial-scale fishing operation. Photo credit: Fernando Flores via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 2.0. Article by Kiona N. Smith. Ars Technica – November 22, 2024. Research article: Science Advances.

The Maya were landscape engineers on a grand scale, even when it came to fishing.

On the eve of the rise of the Maya civilization, people living in what’s now Belize turned a whole wetland into a giant network of fish traps big enough to feed thousands of people. We already know that the Maya turned swamps into breadbaskets by draining and […]

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