Roots and the Subsistence of the Ancient Maya

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Abstract
Despite the fact of their high culture and their affinity with their Mexican neighbors, the modren lowland Maya in some ways appear more Central American than Mexican. As all inhabitants of the tropical forest raise trees such as the pejibaye palm and the ramon, or bread-nut. They have an extensive knowledge of botany and utilize a wide variety of wild plants (Steggerda 1942). They have elaborate food-storage techniques (Wisdom 1941). They make use of the forest itself for defence in war, building concealed paths, pits, and stockade ambushes. As a further military advantage, they seem to be capable of living off the land for long periods of time. They raise root-crops. The highland peoples of Mesoamerica do not do these things. The potential for surplus production has been realized in West Africa, under the stimulus of a sociopolitical organization capable of giving the farmers this motivation. Where this stimulus exists, tropical, shifting, rain-fall agriculture is not inferior. It is, more than the equal of most irrigation systems of subsistence. If it were rigorously applied, a system like this had great potential advantages for the Maya of Late Preclassic and Classic times. The Maya almost certainly had the bases for such a system ready to hand through the entire period of the development. There are only vague indications that they might have picked up the option and actually put a root-crop subsistence scheme into practice. If they had done this, however, the genesis and survival of a civilization in the rain-forest would be more understandable, and a number of serious archaeological questions would be answered.

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