As a student in the 1960’s, most textbooks on the Maya featured maize, beans, and squash in their diet of Mayan foods. Then in 1966 Bronson suggested root crops were crucial to the diet, and several years later Dennis Puleston suggested ramon nuts were equally important.
I have been interested in edible foods of the Mayan people for decades and we now have a list of several hundred edible native food plants of the Mayan people: including edible flowers, edible plant stems, edible leaves, and literally hundreds of edible fruits.
Still, if you enter a Mayan house in a remote area, or if you hike through a milpa in a remote area, what plants to you actually find???
We will continue to work on this project and already have uncovered lots of great information, documented with high resolution photos (we hope you like our photo by Dr Nicholas of the maize, beans and squash that was arranged by Maria Josefina Sequen, one of our helpful Kakchiquel Mayan student interns). She is also an illustrator for www.MayanToons.org.
Posted Nov 3, 2017
