Supporting a Large Population

While the public is fascinated by the temples, writing, and art of the Classic Maya, the greatest achievement of these civilizations was their unique ecological adaptation to the jungle and to the rainforest. The Petén area has poor soils over limestone bedrock and its jungle ecology is very rich, but very, very fragile. Between 1950 and 2005 most of the Petén forests have been destroyed by relatively small populations of several hundred thousand people. Yet the Classic Maya has several million people living in this very same region for centuries.

How did they do this? How did they farm to support all of those people and not destroy their environment? That is the true mystery and the greatest achievement of the lowland Maya civilization. Its solution could help us today save what is left of the Petén and to begin to reforest the devastated areas.

The ecologists tell us that the main characteristics of the tropical forests are diversity and dispersion. Although the forest environment has the greatest diversity of any type of environment found on earth, these species are widely dispersed. This same dispersion is found in most plant and animal species in the tropical forest.

Can we Save the Rainforest?

Evidence from excavation studies of ancient settlements and scientific studies of soils, chemistry, bones, fossil pollen, and other data have shown that one major secret of the success of the ancient Maya forest living was to mimic, to imitate, the diversity and dispersion of the rainforest. To do this, the Classic Maya population used many different forms of farming systems including terrace farming, slash-and-burn milpa farming (as used today,) farming in sunken gardens, raised fields in swamps, gardens in stone boxes, fruit orchards, cacao orchards, and areas of forest left for deer, wild birds, rabbits, and other sources of meat.

Modern farming uses slash-and-burn clearing on wide areas and grow only maize and frijoles. The Classic Maya had a very different system. They had small plots of these diverse types of farming dispersed over a wide area with zones of rainforest and seasonally flooded bajos in between. Their human populations were also more widely dispersed over a large area.

In all of the cities and in the smaller communities families lived in plaza groups. Often several of these plaza groups would be clustered together into hamlets. The huts were placed on low clay mounds about 20 to 40 metres high. After over a thousand years all that remains of these households are the mounds and the heaps of trash. Serious, scientific archaeology is based on the study of hundreds of these houses, statistical analyses of thousands of broken fragments of pottery, potsherds, and technical studies of the middens, soils, and human bones found there. The days of archaeology based on tombs and temples have passed.

Information from Household Trash

The ancient Maya did not throw trash behind their houses because they were unclean or careless! They did it because behind their houses they grew gardens. The trash from previous meals and the "night soils" from turkey, dog, and human feces enriched the soils as natural organic fertilizer. These midden behind houses also allowed for a good feeding area for turkeys and dogs.

Thus, the Maya family households grew much of the vegetables and fruits needed for daily consumption. So, Maya cities were very green with many clusters of huts and scattered zones of royal or noble stone architecture spread widely over the landscape. In this way the cities were self-sufficient. Their large but dispersed populations grew, collected, or hunted all of their own food in the diverse gardens, fields, orchards, and forests within the cities. This system preserved the thin jungle soils, the deer population, and the sources of wood, wild plants, and other wildlife.

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