The Mayans Conserved Water With Residential Water Tanks

The ancient Mayans wrote a leaf or two that could benefit us, and one of them is related to how they conserved water.

Living in Mexico, Belize and Guatemala, which receive very little rainfall for seven months in a year, indications of efficient storage and conservation of water show that they were critically important.

Experts thus employed a surveying technology called LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) as well as excavation data to help them examine the spatial characteristics and cultural modifications of residential-scale water tanks of the ancient Mayans.

LiDAR, a remote sensing technology that gathers high-resolution imagery shot from an airplane at 30,000 points per second, researchers could map ground surfaces through dense vegetation.

Experts examined Yaxnohcah, a Maya site in the Central Yucatan, which showed more than 100 potential small reservoirs through the site, although just five have been studied so far.

"We looked specifically at small depressions that were adjacent to residential structures, and we could assume they were household accessible," said  Jeffrey Brewer, one of the researchers involved in the new study. "We found modified reservoirs, a limestone quarry that would have served as a resultant water tank, and a depression that appears to have served as an area for localized horticulture or agriculture."

The ceramic material used in some of the residential-scale reservoirs indicated to researchers that they were used around 900 B.C. The systems showed a thick, clay "plaster" which allowed the areas to hold the water instead of letting it seep away.

Researchers now hope to study and figure out how the water features were used for farming. purposes. A higher level reservoir might have released water into agricultural fields, but if it was lower, it could have gathered runoff from a paved surface or field.

The findings were presented at the 81st annual meeting of the Society of American Archaeology.