Archaeologists have discovered a massive network of ancient fisheries in Belize constructed by hunter-gatherers some 4000 years ago.
The system of earthen channels exceeds 640 kilometres in length and dates to the Archaic Period, which preceded the emergence of Maya civilisation centuries later. It is the oldest large-scale fish-trapping facility ever recorded in Central America.
鈥淲e were all expecting it to date to a period of sedentary Maya civilisation,鈥� says at the University of New Hampshire, whose team identified the fisheries. 鈥淚t never occurred to us that hunter-gatherers around 4000 years ago might have engaged in this sort of collective, huge construction effort on this scale because nothing like it had ever been found or recorded in Central America before.鈥�
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For decades, researchers about the remnants of canals that wind through Belize鈥檚 Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary, a protected area of lagoons and swamps. Harrison-Buck was inspired to take a more expansive look after coming across research into ancient fisheries in other locations, , that seemed structurally similar to features at Crooked Tree.
Her team collected aerial observations from drones in 2017 and used geospatial imagery to map out the traces of this sunken network. The results exposed a labyrinth of zigzagging trenches that feed into ponds, suggesting the canals were designed to steer fish to isolated locations where they could be easily harvested.
A severe drought in 2019 made fieldwork possible at normally waterlogged sites, enabling Harrison-Buck and her colleagues to excavate some of the structures. Radiocarbon dating and particulate analysis hinted the construction of the fisheries probably coincided with a major drought that hit the northern hemisphere from 2200 to 1900 BC.
By the time this drought arrived, Archaic peoples had learned to cultivate plants, especially maize, and some depended on horticultural skills to survive the changing climate.
Harrison-Buck and her colleagues didn鈥檛 find evidence of maize cultivation in their excavations at Crooked Tree, but they suggest people in this area may have instead adapted to new environmental pressures by developing a highly productive fish-trapping facility. The network had the capacity to feed 15,000 people, well beyond the estimated population of hunter-gatherers in the area at the time, according to the team鈥檚 study.
鈥淭he dominant narrative in the Maya lowlands is that maize was the staple of the diet, but what our article is highlighting is that we should probably not assume that it was all maize cultivation to the exclusion of other subsistence practices,鈥� says Harrison-Buck. 鈥淲e suspect that reliance on fish-trapping was probably more widespread than is currently understood.鈥�
at Indiana University Bloomington, who previously studied the Crooked Tree canals, calls the results 鈥渧ery exciting鈥�.
鈥淭hese findings are related to the revolution in archaeology that is resulting from taking a more respectful view of the past,鈥� says Pyburn. 鈥淚f we don鈥檛 begin with assumptions about cultural evolution predicting that complexity develops over time in a particular way but begin with the assumption that ancient peoples were as intellectually, politically and economically sophisticated as we are, unknown and unexpected innovations and technologies suddenly appear.鈥�
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