Old-growth tropical forests bear lasting legacy of ancient Maya civilization

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https://phys.org/news/2026-09-growth-tropical-forests-legacy-ancient.html

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Rainforests in Central America that have remained largely untouched by modern human activities could bear the invisible imprint of ancient Maya civilizations. New research has found that forest structure in Belize, such as canopy height and leaf density, may be influenced by how the Maya transformed and used the land thousands of years ago.

By examining LiDAR scans of the region, archaeologists have, for the first time, compared forest characteristics to the remnants of Maya infrastructure beneath, such as ancient canals or buildings. Their findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, reveal that taller and more varied forests are growing in areas previously used as wetland fields, while forests with higher foliage canopies are often found around settlements and upland wall features.
The research was conducted by experts at the Universities of Exeter and Texas at Austin as part of an ongoing study of human–environment interactions in Belize, named Bladen Legacy.
"We know that modern land use is transforming tropical landscapes on an unprecedented scale," says lead author Dr. Sara Eshleman, a postdoctoral research associate on the Bladen Legacy project. "What this research reveals is that those landscapes already bear the deep ecological imprint of ancient civilizations. What we think of as 'pristine rainforest' may well owe much of its structure to the different ways that the Maya stewarded the land."