Chinampas (raised-field lake agriculture)
Chinampas (agricultura de jardines flotantes)
- Date
- c. 1100 · confidence medium
- Place
- Culhuacan, Valley of Mexico, Mexico
- Credited to
- Peoples of the Valley of Mexico (Cuicuilco, Teotihuacan); perfected by the Mexica
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Rectangular plots reclaimed from the lake with layers of mud and vegetation, secured with stakes and ahuejote trees and surrounded by canals that irrigate them by capillarity. They sustained several harvests a year and fed Tenochtitlan.
Securely dated chinampa fields belong to the Middle Postclassic (c. 1100-1350); a Preclassic origin has been proposed but is only an inference. Record rewritten after the verification of 23-09-2026 (previously dated to c. 200 BCE).
What it led to
- Feeding of Teotihuacan and later Tenochtitlan (200,000 inhabitants)
- Intensive hydraulic agriculture without draught animals or the plough
- A canal network as an urban transport system
- A model of sustainable agriculture studied today
Built on
- Maize farming
- Manual dredging
- Olmec raised-field cultivation
Made possible
- Nezahualcóyotl dike1449
- Chinampas of Tenochtitlan
- Urban canals of Tenochtitlan
- Mayan raised fields