Ancient Maya cuisine

Ancient Maya cuisine was varied and extensive. Many different types of resources were consumed, including maritime, flora, and faunal material, and food was obtained or produced through a host of strategies, such as hunting, foraging, and large-scale agricultural production. Plant domestication focused on several core foods, the most important of which was maize.

Agriculture

Agricultural production in the Maya area, especially in the northern and southern lowlands, had to contend with a number of factors that constrained plant cultivation. These consist of a generally poor soil quality, an overall lack of nutrients in the soil necessary for intensive production, and, in some areas (especially the tropical environments of the southern lowlands), dense vegetation cover with a high canopy. In the semi-arid areas of the northern Maya lowlands, agriculturalists had to contend with reduced levels of rainfall, shallow soil deposits, and exposed limestone bedrock pavements.The Mayans were skilled farmers, clearing large sections of tropical rain forest and, where groundwater was scarce, building sizeable underground reservoirs for the storage of rainwater.

To combat these deficiencies, the Maya adopted a number of adaptive techniques that, if necessary, allowed for the clear-cutting of land and re-infused the soil with nutrients. Primary among these was slash and burn, or swidden, agriculture, a technique that cleared and temporarily fertilized the area to be cultivated. For example, the introduction of ash into the soil raised the soil’s pH, which in turn raised the content of a variety of nutrients, especially phosphorus, for a short period of time, which may be around two years long. However, the soil will not be suitable for planting for as many ten years. This technique, common throughout the Maya area, is still practiced today in the Maya region. Complementing swidden techniques was crop rotation and milpa farming, which were employed to maintain soil viability and increase the variability of cultivated crops.

Staples

Varieties of maize.

The Maya diet focused on four primary domesticated crops (staple foods): maize, squash, beans (typically tepary beans or common beans) and chile pepper. The first three cultivates are commonly referred to in North America as the "Three Sisters" and, when incorporated together in a diet, complement one another in providing necessary nutrients. Paramount among the three, maize (corn) was the central component to the diet of the ancient Maya, and figured prominently in Maya mythology and ideology. Maize was used and eaten in a variety of ways, but was always nixtamalized. Nixtamalization (a term that derives from the Nahuatl word for the process), is a procedure in which maize is soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution. This releases niacin, a necessary B vitamin (vitamin B₃) that prevents pellagra and reduces incidents of protein deficiency.

Once nixtamalized, maize was typically ground up on a metate and prepared in a number of ways. Tortillas, cooked on a comal and used to wrap other foods (meat, beans, etc.), were common and are perhaps the most well-known pre-Columbian Mesoamerican food. Tamales consist of corn dough, often containing a filling, that are wrapped in a corn husk and steam-cooked. Both atole and pozole were liquid based gruel-like dishes that were made by mixing ground maize (hominy) with water, but being the first much more dense used as a drinking source and the second one with complete big grains of maize incorporated into a chicken broth. Though these dishes could be consumed plain, other ingredients were added to diversify flavor, including, for example, honey, chiles, meat, seafood, cacao, wild onions, and salt.

Several different varieties of beans were grown, including pinto, red, and black beans. Other cultivated crops, including fruits, contributed to the overall diet of the ancient Maya, including tomato, chile peppers, avocado, breadnut, guava, guanabana, papaya, pineapple, pumpkin, and sweet potato. Various herbs were grown and used, including vanilla, epazote, achiote (and the annatto seed), white cinnamon, hoja santa, avocado leaf, garlic vine, “Mexican” oregano, "Mexican" anise, and allspice.

Meats

Hunting supplied the Maya with their main source of meat, though several animals, such as dog and turkey, may have been domesticated. Animals hunted for meat, as well as for other purposes, include deer, tapir, peccary, monkey, other types of fowl, turtle, and iguana. The Maya diet was also supplemented by the exploitation, at least in coastal areas, of maritime resources, including fish, lobster, shrimp, conch, and other shellfish.

See also

• Agriculture in Mesoamerica
• Domesticated plants of Mesoamerica
• Native American cuisine

Sources

• Coe, Sophie D. (1994) America's first cuisines ISBN 0-292-71159-X