They excavate the oldest known Mayan salt flats

Nov. 13. () –

Archaeologists have discovered the oldest known Mayan salt mines in southern Belize, dating back more than 1,500 years, according to the Antiquity magazine.

Since the initial discovery in 2004 of remains of wooden buildings submerged on the sea floor, the team has discovered a wide pattern of sites including ‘salt kitchens’ to boil sea water in pots over the fire to make salt, as well as residences for salt workers and the remains of other pole and straw buildings.

All were remarkably well preserved in red mangrove peat in shallow coastal lagoons. Over 20 years, the team led by Louisiana State University (LSU) professor Heather McKillop has mapped up to 70 underwater sites, with 4,042 wooden posts marking the contours of ancient buildings.

In 2023, the team returned to Belize to excavate a site called Jay-yi Nah, which curiously lacked the broken pots so common at other salt flats, although some pottery fragments were found.

“These resembled fragments from the nearby island site of Wild Cane Cay, which I had excavated previously,” McKillop said. in a statement. “So I suggested to Sills that we re-survey Jay-yi Nah for poles and seafloor artifacts.”

After his excavations, McKillop stayed in a nearby town to study the Jay-yi Nah artifacts. As reported in Antiquity, the materials they found contrasted with those from other nearby underwater sites, which had imported high-quality ceramics, obsidian, and flint.

“At first, this was disconcerting,” McKillop said. “But a radiocarbon dating on a pole we had found at Jay-yi Na provided an Early Classic date, 250-600 AD, and solved the mystery.”

Jay-yi Nah turned out to be much older than the other underwater sites. Through their findings, the researchers learned that Jay-yi Nah had developed as a local business, without the external commercial connections that They were later developed during the Late Classic period (650-800 AD), when the interior Mayan population reached its peak with a great demand for salt, a basic biological need that was in short supply in the interior cities.

Jay-yi Nah had begun as a small salt production site, with ties to the nearby community on Wild Cane Cay that also produced salt during the Early Classic period. The abundant fish bones preserved in anaerobic deposits on Wild Cane Cay suggest that Some salt was produced there to salt fish for later consumption or trade.