**1. Introduction**

Ancient Mesoamericans, including the Maya, practiced rainfall-dependent agriculture rooted in resourceful ingenuity and the skillful use of stone tools and fire (**Figure 1**). Land use strategies in the Americas emerged without major capital investments in plows or cows. The landscape of the Americas depended on interrelationships among people and their observations of environmental processes. In this sense, Mesoamericans worked with nature, and over millennia of trial and error created their domesticated landscape [1–3].

Cropped fields of annuals cycled across the landscape, integrally creating complexity within the phases of forest regeneration while reducing erosion and maintaining soil fertility (**Figure 2**). For the Maya, it was not a choice between cultivated fields and forest (**Figure 3**), as it often appears to Western eyes. In Europe, *cultivable* has long been equated with *arable*, the original meaning of which is plowable. Maya agriculture was based on intimate engagements with nature that integrated subsistence strategies within the context of environmental management [4]. The Maya, both past and present, have directed exuberant

#### **Figure 1.**

*Regional Landforms of the Central Maya Lowlands with Major Ancient Maya Centers Indicated. Credit: MesoAmerican Research Center.*

tropical growth towards human requirements, resolving the needs of everyday life with labor, knowledge, and skill [5–10]. Without the field, there could be no useful forest and without a useful forest there would be no productive field. The growth and expansion of Maya civilization across the millennia was based on reliable resource management practices that have left their imprint on the forest itself in the form of its dominant plants, which are all economically useful [1, 11, 12].

For the Maya forest to provide basic household requisites, farmlands must have varying soil qualities, materials for construction and utensils, fibers and spices, resources for food production [13–15], and habitat for game animals [16–19]. The topography and diverse landscape comprise upland ridges and hills interspersed with *Favored Trees of the Maya Milpa Forest Garden Cycle DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106271*

wetlands and transitional zones. This is the essential palette on which the Maya developed strategic land cover designs that not only addressed human needs but mitigated vagaries of rainfall and fire hazards. Ancient Maya settlement patterns reflect a continuum of intensity, ranging from densely occupied upland ridges to sparsely inhabited lowlands. The spatial mosaic formed by the gradation between uplands, lowlands, and wetlands provided access to diverse habitats that facilitated living in and with the Maya forest. The forest today is a product of selection over generations, centuries, and millennia to fulfill everyday needs within the natural forest context [20–25].
