Archaeologists, with the assistance of drones and Google Earth imagery, have found 4,000-year-old canals in Belize that had been as soon as utilized by the predecessors of the traditional Mayans to catch freshwater fish.
“The aerial imagery was essential to establish this actually distinctive sample of zigzag linear canals” research co-author Eleanor Harrison-Buck of the College of New Hampshire stated of the pre-Christopher Columbus discovery.
The fish-trapping canals, constructed round 2000 BCE, continued for use by their Mayan descendants till round 200 CE.
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“That is the earliest large-scale Archaic fish-trapping facility recorded in historic Mesoamerica,” the research authors wrote in Science Advances, including that “such landscape-scale intensification could have been a response to long-term local weather disturbance recorded between 2200 and 1900 BCE.”
The canals possible concerned “barbed spearpoints” that had been discovered close by that might have been used to spear fish, research co-author Marieka Brouwer Burg of the College of Vermont.
The spearpoints had been tied to sticks alongside the canals, the analysis staff believes.
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“It’s actually fascinating to see such large-scale modifications of the panorama so early — it reveals individuals had been already constructing issues,” College of Pittsburgh archaeologist Claire Ebert, advised the Related Press of the semi-nomadic individuals who constructed the canals. Ebert was not concerned within the research.
Ebert added that the Mayan civilization is best studied by archaeologists due to its many ruins, like Chichen Itza.
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The Mayans additionally developed complicated methods of writing, arithmetic and astronomy.