'Shocking' discovery reveals Mayan civilization 4,000 years ago

The discovery of a complex network of fish traps dating back 4,000 years shows how the Maya developed into a civilization in Central America and what is now southern Mexico.

A series of ancient fish traps built by direct ancestors of the Maya have been discovered in Belize. These structures were capable of catching enough fish to feed 15,000 people each year. They consisted of a network of canals and ponds that channeled fish into areas where they could be easily fished.

The Mayan hunter-gatherer ancestors created fishing grounds to help feed their people during droughts. An aerial view of (A) a contemporary fishery in Zambia; (B) an ancient fishery in the Bolivian Amazon; and (C) an ancient fishery in the Western Lagoon of Belize. (Image: Harrison-Buck et al., captured from Google Earth.)

Hunter-gatherers built these complex networks about 4,000 years ago, during the Archaic period, before people in the region practiced large-scale agriculture, the scientists wrote in a study recently published in the journal Science Advances.

' This is the earliest documented large-scale ancient fish trap facility in ancient Mesoamerica ,' the team wrote in the paper. The success of these hunter-gatherers appears to have contributed to the rise of the Maya, a civilization that later dominated the Maya lowlands of present-day Central America and southern Mexico.

These fish traps would have encouraged people to develop permanent settlements and later cities . 'It seems that the canals allowed for annual fish harvests and social gatherings, which would have encouraged people to return to the area and gather for longer periods of time ,' said study co-author Marieka Brouwer Burg, a professor of anthropology at the University of Vermont and co-director of the research team.

"Such large investments in the landscape could eventually have led to the development of a complex society typical of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization, which emerged in the region around 1200 BC," says Brouwer Burg .

At the time the fish traps were built, the area was dry and people may have been facing drought, the team wrote in the study. This may have encouraged people to build the facilities together to ensure there was enough food.

The team used satellite and drone-captured aerial imagery to detect the canals and ponds. They also excavated and radiocarbon dated organic sediments and charcoal to determine when the fish traps were built.