Describe the Maya technique of agriculture
The first people to occupy the Yucatan Peninsula were hunters and gatherers, who arrived some 11,000 years ago. These nomadic people lived in small family bands. Around 2500 B.C., they started cultivating maize and abandoned a nomadic way of life to settle in villages surrounded by cornfields.
The Maya created arable land by using a "slash-and-burn" technique to clear the forests. They planted maize and secondary crops, such as beans, squash, and tobacco. In the highlands to the west, they terraced the slopes on mountainsides; in the lowlands, they cleared the jungle for planting. After a period of two years, they moved their fields to new locations, allowing the old fields to lie fallow for ten years before reusing them.
