Water and sustainable land use at the ancient tropical city of Tikal, Guatemala

Abstract

The access to water and the engineered landscapes accommodating its collection and allocation are pivotal issues for assessing sustainability. Recent mapping, sediment coring, and formal excavation at Tikal, Guatemala, have markedly expanded our understanding of ancient Maya water and land use. Among the landscape and engineering feats identified are the largest ancient dam identified in the Maya area of Central America; the posited manner by which reservoir waters were released; construction of a cofferdam for dredging the largest reservoir at Tikal; the presence of ancient springs linked to the initial colonization of Tikal; the use of sand filtration to cleanse water entering reservoirs; a switching station that facilitated seasonal filling and release; and the deepest rock-cut canal segment in the Maya Lowlands. These engineering achievements were integrated into a system that sustained the urban complex through deep time, and they have implications for sustainable construction and use of water management systems in tropical forest settings worldwide.archaeology | resilience | intensification | tropics | paleoecology H ow human populations have used currently threatened environments in a sustainable and managed manner over time can be addressed through archeology and its multidisciplinary collaborations (1). Today, in the geographical core of Classic Maya civilization (A.D. 250-800)-the tropical forest of Petén, Guatemala (a subtropical moist forest in the Holdridge system) (2)-short-fallow slash-and-burn agriculture, logging, and cattle ranching have significantly affected portions of the ecosystem and limited access to potable water (3, 4). Nevertheless, within this biophysical context, one of the earliest and most long-lived tropical civilizations flourished. Maya water and land uses were significantly affected by highly seasonal precipitation and karst physiography, which accommodated little perennial surface water. In response, the ancient Maya developed a complex system of water management dependent on water collection and storage devices. The hydraulic system was cleverly tailored to the biophysical conditions and adaptively engineered to the evolving needs of a growing population for more than 1,000 y (5-7). By identifying how a tropical setting was altered using a Stone Age technology, methods and techniques associated with long-lived and sustainable landscape engineering are revealed. Establishing baseline assessments of human impact on an environment before the extraction and depletion of resources by recent technological advancements may allow an evaluation of current technology's effects and the origins of unintended ecological as well as social consequences.The ancient low-density urban community of Tikal, Guatemala, was recently examined by way of water and landscape assessments (8-10).* Our intent was to document the evolution of a tropical wet-dry engineered landscape (11) and the manner in which the site was altered from its initial colonization (Middle to Late Preclassic, 600 B.C. to A.D. ...

Caracol, Belize, and Changing Perceptions of Ancient Maya Society

“…Caracol likely has more than 1600 of these small constructed reservoirs associated with residential groups (A. S. Chase 2016b; A. S. Chase and Weishampel 2016); some still hold drinkable water through the dry season. Many of the smaller reservoirs were not recognized and recorded in previous settlement surveys, and even when they were, their potential importance in providing water could be easily overshadowed by the more impressive, large reservoir systems that involved overflow features and filtration (Crandall 2009;Scarborough et al 2012b). Thus, Maya models of elite power based on control of water ritual and water in large central reservoirs (e.g., Lucero 1999aLucero , 2006) now need to take into account these smaller features that likely supported the bulk of the population in a waterless environment (see A. S. Chase 2012Chase , 2016b.…”

“…Chase 2014b). While 47 smaller reservoirs are known from the surrounding Tikal landscape, there were 15 large reservoirs at Tikal that were centrally located with sizable capacity (Scarborough et al 2012b). This differs significantly from Caracol where minimally 1590 built reservoirs supplement the eight larger reservoirs associated with public architecture (A. S. Chase 2016b), benefitting and sustaining the broader population of the site.…”

“…A second LiDAR campaign in 2013 added an additional 40 km 2 of more residential groups in the eastern part of the site; the western limit of Caracol remains undefined as settlement continues over the border into Guatemala. While cognizant of other methods for estimating ancient Maya populations that lower traditional estimates (e.g., supplementary material in Scarborough et al 2012b), we accept the conservative estimate of 100,000 people living at Caracol at its height.…”

Classic Period collapse of the Central Maya Lowlands: Insights about human–environment relationships for sustainability

“…In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these forests provided dyewood, latex, and tropical hardwood (120). Today, the density of occupation of what was the CMLs remains about one to two orders of magnitude less than the density of the Late Classic Period, depending on the location in question (13,70). The region remains one of the few large areas of the world that has exhibited only one millennium-long wave of occupation growth and decline (121).…”

The Role of Climate in the Collapse of the Maya Civilization: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Scientific Discourse

“…Evans et al [68] and Buckley et al [70] primarily discuss climate as a contributing factor in the demise of Angkor, Cambodia, mentioning the similarity with the Maya collapse. Scarborough et al [72] deals with the water management of the ancient city of Tikal, Guatemala. Similar to the most-frequently cited references presented in Table 1, the papers with the highest number of news mentions are predominantly based on paleoclimatic methods.…”