Archaeologists using drones uncover 4,000-year-old fish-trapping canals made by ancient Mayan predecessors

Archaeologists, with the help of drones and Google Earth imagery, have discovered 4,000-year-old canals in Belize that were once used by the predecessors of the ancient Mayans to catch freshwater fish.

“The aerial imagery was crucial to identify this really distinctive pattern of zigzag linear canals” study co-author Eleanor Harrison-Buck of the University of New Hampshire said of the pre-Christopher Columbus discovery.

The fish-trapping canals, built around 2000 BCE, continued to be used by their Mayan descendants until around 200 CE.

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Altar Q that depicts 16 kings in the dynastic succession of the city is seen inside the archeological site of Copan, in Copan Ruinas, Honduras. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd, File)

“This is the earliest large-scale Archaic fish-trapping facility recorded in ancient Mesoamerica,” the study authors wrote in Science Advances, adding that “such landscape-scale intensification may have been a response to long-term climate disturbance recorded between 2200 and 1900 BCE.”

The canals likely involved “barbed spearpoints” that were found nearby that would have been used to spear fish, study co-author Marieka Brouwer Burg of the University of Vermont.

Researchers excavate sediment in 2019 that will be sequenced to help them date the evidence of a large-scale pre-Columbian fish-trapping facility in Belize. (Belize River East Archaeology project via AP)

The spearpoints were tied to sticks along the canals, the research team believes.

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“It’s really interesting to see such large-scale modifications of the landscape so early — it shows people were already building things,” University of Pittsburgh archaeologist Claire Ebert, told the Associated Press of the semi-nomadic people who built the canals. Ebert was not involved in the study.