Archaeologists using drones have discovered 4,000-year-old fishing ditches built by ancient Mayan ancestors.
Archaeologists, with the help of drones and Google Earth images, have discovered 4,000-year-old canals in Belize that were once used by the predecessors of the ancient Mayans to catch freshwater fish.
“Aerial photography was essential to identify this truly unique pattern of vertical meandering canals,” study co-author Eleanor Harrison-Buck of the University of New Hampshire said of the pre-Christopher Columbus discovery.
The fishing canals, built around 2000 BCE, continued to be used by their Maya descendants until 200 CE.
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Altar Q depicting the 16 kings in the order of the city is seen inside the archaeological site of Copan, Copan Ruinas, Honduras. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd, File)
“This is the first very large Archaic fish fishery recorded in ancient Mesoamerica,” the study authors wrote in Science Advances, adding that “the persistence of such an area may have been a response to the prolonged climatic disturbances recorded between 2200 and 2200. In 1900 BCE .”
The trenches may have involved “stabbing spears” found nearby that were used to stab fish, said co-author Marieka Brouwer Burg of the University of Vermont.
Researchers are sampling sediments in 2019 to help them date evidence of a major pre-Columbian fishing center in Belize. (Belize River East Archeology project via AP)
The spears were tied to sticks by the trenches, the research team believes.
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“It’s really interesting to see such huge changes in the landscape so early – it shows that people were already building things,” University of Pittsburgh archaeologist Claire Ebert, told the Associated Press of the nomadic people who built the canals. Ebert did not participate in the study.
Stela M and the Hieroglyphic Stairway are visible inside the Copan archaeological site, Copan Ruinas, Honduras. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd, File)
Ebert added that the Maya civilization is best studied by archaeologists because of its many ruins, such as Chichen Itza.
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The Mayans also developed complex systems of writing, mathematics and astronomy.
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