Ancient Farm Discovery Yields Clues to Maya Diet

The ancient Maya cultivated crops of manioc—also known as cassava—some....

  The ancient Maya cultivated crops of manioc—also known as cassava—some 1,400 years ago, according to archaeologists studying a Maya farm preserved in volcanic ash. The discovery may help solve the long-standing mystery of how the ancient culture produced enough energy-rich, starchy food to support its large city-centered populations. "There's a good chance that this will change the way we look at how the Mayans fed themselves," said study leader Payson Sheets, an anthropologist at University of Colorado at Boulder. "It's a very important clue to resolving this [question]," Sheets said. "We're extremely happy to have found this." (The research was funded by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. National Geographic News is a division of the National Geographic Society.) Sheets's team found the ancient manioc field near Ceren, a Maya village in El Salvador about 15 miles (25 kilometers) west of modern-day San Salvador (see El Salvador map). The team was excavating what it thought was an ancient cornfield when it discovered traces of cultivated manioc roots perfectly preserved by a volcanic eruption. The discovery provides a glimpse into the Maya farm as it may have appeared around A.D. 600, when a volcano near Ceren erupted. The nearby village was covered with as much as 17 feet (5 meters) of ash, preserving it in remarkable detail, the archaeologists said. "When we excavate [at Ceren], we're looking at that moment from all that time ago," said Christine Dixon, a doctoral candidate from Lafayette, California, who was on the team. "It's as close as the present can get to the past, which, for archaeologists, is a very exciting endeavor."