12/3/2023 0 Comments Maya 2022Unable to find a master list of indigenous Maya food plants, Fedick recently compiled and published one that draws on decades of Maya plant knowledge. “Chaya and cassava together would have provided a huge amount of carbohydrates and protein,” Santiago said. Its leaves are high in protein, iron, potassium, and calcium. Another is chaya, a shrub domesticated by the Maya and eaten today by their descendants. Some of the toughest plants the Maya would have turned to include cassava with its edible tubers, and hearts of palm. “Even in the most extreme drought situation - and we have no clear evidence the most extreme situation ever occurred - 59 species of edible plants would still have persisted,” Santiago said.Ĭassava, a drought-resistant edible plant grown by the ancient Maya. The results of this analysis have now been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ![]() However, a new analysis by UC Riverside archaeologist Scott Fedick and plant physiologist Louis Santiago shows the Maya had nearly 500 edible plants available to them, many of which are highly drought resistant. ![]() Believing the Maya were mostly dependent on drought-sensitive corn, beans, and squash, some scholars assume the droughts resulted in starvation. There is no dispute that a series of droughts occurred in the Yucatan Peninsula of southeastern Mexico and northern Central America at the end of the ninth century, when Maya cities mysteriously began to be depopulated. La Pirámide in the Mexican state of Yucatán was built by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization sometime between the 8th and 12th centuries AD.
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