(Credit: Natasha Breen/Shutterstock) If you lived among the ancient Maya, let's hope you liked your fish super salty.Archaeologists working at a former Maya salt mine near the coast in Belize say that they've found evidence of the fairly large-scale production of salted fish for trade at markets further inland. In the jungle, where seafood was a luxury and food wouldn't keep well, the salty fish could have been a valuable commodity.It's further evidence that producing and trading salt was an important part of the Maya economy, and another insight into the daily lives of an ancient jungle civilization.
Researchers from Louisiana State University and Ibaraki University in Japan looked at a collection of stone tools from the Paynes Creek Salt Works in Belize. Though the site is now submerged, 1,500 years ago workers there would use large ceramic vessels known as briquetage to boil out salt from briny water. A ...
