Yup. A lake that used to fuel the single most productive agricultural system humans have ever practiced. It's sad but there is a strong indigenous movement to bring them back. The axolotl actually became a major symbol of indigenous resistance because of this movement

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ch4s3 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> the single most productive agricultural system humans have ever practiced

This is simply not true. The highiest maize yield per hectare I can find anywhere online for chinampas is less than half the 13.5 metric tons per hectare that farmers get in Iowa. The more reputable numbers are less than 1/4 of that. It's probably true that they were among the most productive pre-modern agricultural plots which is a great achievement, but there's no need to make things up.

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culi 22 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not being hyperbolic.

They produce a lot more than just corn. Not only can they be farmed for hundreds of years without break, but they can be harvested 4 to 7 times per year. They are 13 times as productive per unit of area as conventional dry-land farming.

> In Xochimilco, roughly 750 hectares of active chinampas produce around 80 tons of vegetables daily. This translates to a massive, continuous, year-round output of over 38,000 tons per year across the entire area

So that translates to 50.7 metric tons per hectre.

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> the most productive pre-modern agricultural plots which is a great achievement, but there's no need to make things up

Post-industrial agriculture is not actually more productive per area. It's just more productive per input labor.

> Agricultural yields within the most densely populated and productive preindustrial land-use systems compared well with modern yields and were sustained in some regions for centuries to millennia, even though they also tended to require extreme inputs of labor and other socially unsustainable hardships

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1217241110

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zeckalpha 40 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

How much fertilizer does the Iowan farmer need to add to their field to achieve that? How many years can they maintain that yield without eroding the soil?

	▲	UncleOxidant 30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		How many years can they maintain that without petroleum inputs?

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trhway 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How it was (a great interactive 3d reconstruction)

https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/

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culi 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is awesome, thanks for sharing.

Andrew Wilson, who works with the United Nations World Food Program, also made an in-depth minidoc on them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86gyW0vUmVs

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palata 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Wow this is amazing. Thank you!

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trhway 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Thanks to the author and HN - it was posted here sometime ago, and being that impressive it naturally stuck in my memory like i'm sure now it will in yours :)

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