Ancient Maya cuisine

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Ancient Maya cuisine was varied and extensive. Many different types of resources were consumed, including maritime, flora, and faunal material, and food was obtained or produced through strategies such as hunting, foraging, and large-scale agricultural production. Plant domestication concentrated upon several core foods, the most important of which was maize.^[1]

Much of the ancient Maya food supply was grown in agricultural fields and forest gardens, known as pet kot.^[2] The system takes its name from the stones (pet meaning "circular" and kot "wall of loose stones") that characteristically surrounded the gardens.

The ancient Maya adopted a number of adaptive techniques that, if necessary, allowed for the clear-cutting of land and re-infused the soil with nutrients. Among these was slash-and-burn, or swidden, agriculture, a technique that cleared and temporarily fertilized the area. For example, the introduction of ash into the soil raises the soil's pH. This in turn temporarily raises the content of a variety of nutrients, especially phosphorus.

The effect lasts about two years. However, the soil will not remain suitable for planting for as many as ten years. This technique, common throughout the Maya area, is still practiced in the region today. Complementing swidden techniques were crop rotation and farming, employed to maintain soil viability and increase the variety of crops.

To understand how and in what quantities food resources were relied upon by the Ancient Maya, stable isotopic analysis has been utilized.^[3] This method allows for the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes to be chemically extracted from animal and human skeletal remains. These elements are then run through a mass spectrometer and the values display the enrichment of maize and the extent of aquatic resources in an individual's diet.^[4]

Many foods and food production techniques used by the ancient Maya civilization remain in use today by the modern Maya peoples, and many have spread far beyond the Maya region.