Although a priori would appear that maize was the first agricultural product was grown in Central America, due to the strong influence helped indigenous peoples and that still holds today, does not seem that way. Some researchers, such as the Girard case, saying that agriculture began with other Mesoamerican different crop, cassava (manikot esculenta), along with other roots such as sweet potatoes and jicama. The call came later agricultural trinity: the pumpkin harvest began about 7,500 years ago, and maize and beans 7,000 2,000.
3,500 years ago, agriculture had spread throughout Mesoamerica and its inhabitants had become completely sedentary. The cultures were forced to settle longer in the same places and villages first appeared, they built their houses and temples and produced pottery was baked in ovens. Also in this period intensified other work, making baskets, ropes, nets, textiles, and refined the techniques of grinding stone, which applied equally to necklaces, pipes, etc.
The ethnic group known Popoloca played an important role in the development of Mesoamerican agriculture. According to studies conducted in 1964 by MacNeish, former Popolocas, the proto-Otomanguean, farming culture began 7,000 years ago, which until then was a natural landscape became one cultivated. Along with the roots such as cassava, sweet potato or yam, Chile began to be cultivated, amaranth, avocado, pumpkin, izote, cactus, plum, agave, mesquite, etc. For the eighth century AD Popolocas already knew and domesticated plants and animals all who knew all Mesoamerican peoples eight centuries later, when the English came to the continent.
Popolocas development in the agricultural field was extended to the engineering, build terraces, canals and small reservoirs to jagüeyes way. In addition, they are considered one of the pioneers in the manufacturing towns of Mesoamerican ceramics. For the test of carbon 14 is known to its age dating from between 2,300 and 1,500 BC. We can not understand what kind of cultures and societies formed the ancient inhabitants of Mesoamerica without knowing what kind of crops were given mainly. For this study, archaeologists can identify those products grown in various ways or methods. Their findings are based on the study of the areas where they lived and grew, where they found the charred remains of their crops. Similarly draw conclusions on the microscopic analysis of soil samples from the excavations, detecting the pollen produced by specific species of plants. For archaeologists, the phytoliths are an extinct world exposed. These tiny mineral objects produced by certain plants in the place where they grew up and remain on earth, are revealed as a sociological ideology then expose what were the crops that were given at that time past and, therefore, what was the staple diet of the inhabitants.
Until recently, archaeologists claimed that most of the Mayan culture was the kind of slash and burn, but according Holmul no longer thinks the same and it seems that logging and burning are given a smaller scale . The results of new research reveals that most of the cities, both the Preclassic and the Classic, used agriculture intensive, made use of terraces filled with low sludge, which were more fertile, and the use of low drainage, irrigation channels, tree planting, use of trees as huixil (Leucaena-leucocephala) and other substances such as soil fertilizer for nitrogen.
According to Tom Sever, "the Maya could not do well, since water is about 150 meters deep in the Peten, so they depended on rain." Although the rain forest experiences a dry season each year, and trees absorb water from the soil, Sever said that in the Peten region, the Maya made use of rainwater collected in swamps called bajos, which cover 40% of the landscape. Today the rain evaporates before someone uses it, but the excavations and satellite images reveal a network of canals between Cibal or low made by the Maya. Similarly, Sever believes that the channels used to control water reuse and rain, allowing farmers to imagine the old busy all day in intensive agriculture. Have not used these low, it seems almost impossible to be able to keep the dense population of that time in the region of Petén. The Maya had then to 40% more fertile ground than the other 60%, a large contribution to food production. Also in the Petén lakes, archaeologists have studied pollen samples taken, these studies result in a heavy deforestation around 1,200 years ago, but not caused by slash and burn agriculture, as previously thought Not long ago, but climate change and the production of stucco for their cities. Evaporation and erosion was so fast that destroyed the agricultural system in use for 2,000 years.
Moreover, the Aztecs, who arrived late to the valley had to conform and adapt to living on the islands. They had devised a method by which to produce crops that would the basis of their diet, for it made use of artificial islands, or floating gardens, allowing them to meet their basic food needs of population growth which they lived. Water and associated engineering also proved a valuable weapon in increasing agricultural production and to that cause, or aochpango built many aqueducts, including the most impressive were in the imperial capital, Tenochtitlan. Aztec crop did not differ much from the likes Maya and their preferences were the same in corn, squash, beans, chile, amaranth, cocoa, pepper, snuff, chia, tomatoes and other crops that developed with a single tool called a coa, a stick with a pointed end.
The Aztecs used different techniques for crops such as slashing, which was to clear the land, and terraces on a hillside acreage held by a small wall. The floating gardens, used in the valley of Mexico, had a sophisticated system that allowed farmers to take the floor of the lake areas intensively. Among all crops, especially two of them were different from those pertaining to food, cotton, whose production was the mainstay for the manufacture of their clothes, and maguey, to prepare a ceremonial drink, intoxicating called pulque.
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