Mayan Wisdom Uncovered

By Jules Siegel

Originally published by London Observer Foreign News Service. Photographs courtesy of El Eden Ecological Reserve.

The ancient Maya may have cultivated mats of algae called periphyton for fertilizer, according to new evidence uncovered by scientists at the El Eden Ecological Reserve near Cancun.

Modern Maya mainly use slash and burn, and they rotate cultivation from plot to plot to allow the land to restore itself, a method that could not provide enough food for the known population of this area when the Spanish arrived.

It was once believed that the ancient Maya also used slash and burn, but aerial photographs made in the late '70s revealed that their lands were criss-crossed with extensive irrigation canals. Even this did not account for the high yields that would have been necessary to feed the millions of Maya the Spanish found living here at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century.

Containing 3,700 acres of jungle, savanna and wetlands located in the almost uninhabited swampy jungles northeast of Cancun, El Eden was founded as a private ecological reserve in 1990 by botanist Arturo Gómez-Pompa.

Ancient Mayan dikes at El Eden

Currently Distinguished Professor of Botany at University of California Riverside, Gómez-Pompa, shared the 1994 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, the world's premier award for conservation.

The terrain is so densely vegetated and unexplored that although it is only 22 miles from Cancun, it takes at least two hours in a four-wheel drive vehicle to get to the reserve.

"When I explored the reserve, I noticed low rock walls marking off certain areas, but they did not seem to be property markers, as they were too low and were located in swamps," says Gómez-Pompa. "They looked like dikes." UC Riverside archaeologist Scott Fedick confirmed that these were pre-Conquest Mayan structures that seemed to be check dams or dikes to hold water run-off during the dry season.

The ponds were covered with thick periphyton mats. Since periphyton were found to concentrate nitrogen and phosphorous, El Eden researchers theorized that they might have been used as fertilizer. Experiments by Sergio Palacios and Ana Luisa Anaya revealed that periphyton is as effective as chemical fertilizers.