Posted on 12/19/2009 7:43:25 PM PST by SunkenCiv
...Anabel Ford, an archaeologist at UC Santa Barbara and director of the university's MesoAmerican Research Center, suggests... that the forest gardens cultivated by the Maya demonstrate their great appreciation for the environment. Her findings are published in the current issue of the Journal of Ethnobiology in an article titled "Origins of the Maya Forest Garden: Maya Resource Management." ...The ancient Maya, who farmed without draft animals or plows, and had access only to stone tools and fire, followed what Ford calls the "milpa cycle." It is an ancient land use system by which a closed canopy forest is transformed into an open field for annual crops, then a managed orchard garden, and then a closed canopy forest again. The cycle covers a time period of 12 to 24 years. A misconception about the milpa cycle is that the fields lie fallow after several years of annual crop cultivation. "In reality, in the 'high-performance milpa,' fields are never abandoned, even when they are forested," Ford explains in the article. "The milpa cycle is a rotation of annuals with successive stages of forest perennials during which all phases receive careful human management.
(Excerpt) Read more at ia.ucsb.edu ...
A ‘memorable moment’. It’s good for you though...
Anything you survive makes you tougher...but still, there are some things I would rather forego or even forget.
I keep taking it. I spend most of the aftermath giving.
No, the only thing that would have given the Native American population a fighting change would have been if they had domecicatable animals. With the lack of them on the American continents the population did not develop the same type of immunities to animal communicated diseases that were common in Europe, Asia and Africa.
It is almost impossible to resist an invader with 90% of your people dead.
the wheel. I stand by that.
You have a viewpoint... I do not agree with.
“And made it with water, not milk. Nastier yet. ;-’)”
Don’t forget that they added chili peppers to it, as well. That would make it all right, according to some folks I once knew. ;)
Cocoa, Caffeinated ‘Black Drink’ Were Widespread in Pre-Contact Southwest, Study Finds
http://westerndigs.org/use-of-cocoa-black-drink-widespread-in-pre-contact-southwest-study-finds/
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