Never heard of this place. It says it’s a man-made island completely surrounded by mainland Mexico.
Who *made* the island?
Google ‘Tenochtitlan’ and ‘Xochimilco’ and you can see who and how they made it. The resemblance in that photo is truly amazing.
Since it’s man-made, I guess some men did. /rimshot
But seriously... :’) The practice of building on shallow bodies of water is found all over the world, particularly in regions which have standing water. Obviously it works better where there’s no ice to worry about, and not in deserts.
The advantages to this idea were defense of the town, firefighting (you’d think — wasn’t foolproof though), availability of food (cranberries in some UK sites, I think that was discussed on that “Lincolnshire Fens” canals topic; fish), availability of sort of clean water. If I had to make a wild guess, in ancient societies most of a body’s water needs had to be satisfied from fruits and other foods, as well as beer and wine (which came along later), otherwise there wouldn’t be any descendants. :’)