In dozens of archaeological discoveries around the world, from the once-successful reservoirs and canals of Angkor Wat in Cambodia to the desert Viking colonies From Greenland, new evidence shows civilizations struggling with unforeseen climate change and the reality that their agricultural practices have become unsustainable.
Among these discoveries are also success stories, where ancient agricultural practices helped civilizations survive in difficult times.
Zuni Farmers in the southwestern United States, they managed to survive long periods of extremely low rainfall between 1200 and 1400 AD by adopting small-scale, decentralized irrigation systems. Farmers in Ghana faced severe droughts from 1450 to 1650 by planting indigenous African grains such as drought-tolerant millet.
Ancient practices like these are gaining new interest today. As countries face unprecedented heat waves, storms and melting glaciers, some farmers and international development organizations are looking deep into agricultural archives to revive these ancient solutions.
Drought-hit farmers in Spain get their medieval life back Moorish irrigation technology. International companies eager for carbon offsets paid a lot of money for biochar made using pre-Columbian Amazonian production techniques. Texas farmers appealed old roof cutting methods to protect against unpredictable weather patterns.
But clinging to ancient technologies and techniques without paying attention to historical context misses one of the most important lessons that ancient farmers can reveal: agricultural sustainability is as much about power and sovereignty as it is about soil, water and crops.
I am an archaeologist who studies agricultural sustainability in the past. Discoveries in recent years showed how the human past It is full of people Who dealt with climate change in a sustainable and unsustainable way. Archaeologists are discovering that ancient sustainability was closely linked to politics. However, these dynamics are often forgotten in discussions about sustainability today.
Maya Milpa Agriculture: Access to the forest is essential
In the tropical lowlands of Mexico and Central America, indigenous Mayan farmers have practiced milpa agriculture for thousands of years. Milpa farmers adapted to drought, gently guiding forest ecology through controlled burns and careful forest conservation.
Knowledge of milpa agriculture has empowered many rural farmers navigate climate change during the notorious Mayan Collapse – two centuries of political disintegration and urban depopulation between 800 and 1000 AD. Importantly, later Mayan political leaders worked with farmers to maintain this flexibility. His carefree approach is still legible in the artifacts and settlement patterns of post-collapse farming communities and preserved in the flexible tribute schedules for Mayan farmers documented by 16th century Spanish monks.
In my book, “Rooting in a Useless Land: Ancient Farmers, Celebrity Chefs, and Environmental Justice in Yucatán,” traces the deep history of the Mayan milpa. Using archaeology, I show how ancient farmers adapted milpa agriculture in response to centuries of drought and political upheaval.
Modern Mayan milpa practices began to gain public attention a few years ago when international development organizations partnered with famous chefs such as René Redzepi de Nomaand embraced the concept.
However, these groups condemned the traditional milpa practice of burning new areas of forest as unsustainable. Instead, they promoted a “no-burn” version to gain certification organic corn for high-end restaurants. Its burn-free version of milpa relies on fertilizers to grow maize in a fixed location, rather than using the controlled ecology of fire to manage soil fertility in vast forests.
The result restricted traditional practices that Mayan farmers had used for centuries. It also fueled a modern political threat to traditional Mayan milpa agriculture: land grabbing.
Traditional milpa farming requires a lot of forested land, as farmers need to relocate their fields every two years. But this need for forests is at odds with hotel companies, industrial livestock farms and green energy developers who want cheap land and consider Mayan Milpa forest management practices inefficient. No-burn milpa facilitates this conflict by confining maize farming to a small space indefinitely, rather than spreading it across the forest over generations. But it also changes tradition.
Mayan milpa farmers are now struggling to practice their ancient agricultural techniques, not because they have forgotten or lost them, but because neocolonial Earth privatization policies actively undermine farmers’ ability to manage forests as their ancestors did.
Milpa’s farmers are increasingly forced to adopt a reworked version of their heritage or abandon farming altogether – as many have done.
Mexico’s fragile artificial islands: threats from development
When I look at the work of other archaeologists investigating ancient agricultural practices, I see these same complications of power and sustainability.
In central Mexico, chinampas they are ancient systems of artificial islands and channels. They have allowed farmers to grow food in wetlands for centuries.
The continued existence of chinampas is a legacy of deep ecological knowledge and a resource that allows communities to feed themselves.
But archeology has revealed that generations of sustainable chinampa management could be overturned almost overnight. This happened when the expansionist Aztec Empire decided Xaltocan Lake reengineering for salt production in the 14th century and rendered its chinampas unusable.
Today, the future of Chinampa agriculture depends on a pocket of protected fields run by local farmers on the swampy outskirts of Mexico City. These fields are now at risk as demand for housing drives informal settlements to the chinampa area.
Andean highlands: a story of labor exploitation
Traditional Andean agriculture in South America incorporates a wide range of ancient farming techniques. One in particular has a checkered history of attracting revival efforts.
In the 1980s, government agencies, archaeologists and development organizations spent a fortune trying to persuade Andean farmers to revive high field agriculture. Ancient raised fields have been found around Lake Titicaca on the border of Peru and Bolivia. These groups became convinced that this relic technology could reduce hunger in the Andes by allowing consecutive potato harvests without the need for fallow.
But Andean farmers had no connection to the labor-intensive cultivated fields. The practice was abandoned even before the emergence of the Inca civilization in the 13th century. The effort to revive the old elevated agriculture collapsed.
Since then, more archaeological discoveries around Lake Titicaca suggested that ancient farmers were forced to work the raised fields by the expansionist Tiwanaku empire during its peak between 500 and 1100 AD. Far from the politically neutral narrative promoted by development organizations, raised fields did not exist to help farmers feed themselves. They were a technology to exploit labor and extract surplus crops from ancient Andean farmers.
Respecting the stories of ancient practices
Recovering ancestral agriculture techniques can be a step towards sustainable food systems, especially when descendant communities lead their recovery. The world can, and I think should, go back to recover the agricultural practices of our collective past.
But we cannot pretend that these practices are apolitical.
The Mayan milpa farmers who continue to practice controlled burns in defiance of land privatizers understand the value of ancient techniques and the threat posed by political power. So do Chinese Chinampa farmers working to restore local food to disadvantaged urban communities. And the same happens with Andean farmers who refuse to participate in projects to rehabilitate once exploitative elevated fields.
Depending on how they are used, ancient agricultural practices can reinforce social inequalities or create more equitable food systems. Old practices are not inherently good – a deeper commitment to fair and equitable food systems is needed to make them sustainable.
This article was republished from The conversation, an independent, nonprofit news organization that brings you trusted facts and analysis to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Chelsea Fischer, University of South Carolina
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Chelsea Fisher has received research funding from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Fulbright-Hays Program.
