The earliest European accounts of Maya wetland fields come from Spanish reports, such as that of the Battle of Cintla (maize in Nahuatl) in 1519 in Tabasco, Mexico, in which Cortes’s army followed their indigenous foes into a maze of ditches and steep banks (Puleston 1977; Freidel and Scarborough 1982, citing Lopez de Gomara in Simpson 1966:46). Herein, Europeans encountered America’s millennia old management of wetlands. Today, we value wetlands for their myriad of ecosystem services, aesthetics, and long history of human interactions and ecosystem change preserved within their soils and relict geometry (Barber 1993). They also have unique and little studied soils and ecosystems (Amundson et al. 2003) that are being lost at high rates in Central America and around the world (Ellison 2004). Some of these complex systems also contain evidence of ancient knowledge and adaptations to environmental hazards, and thus represent cultural and ecological heritage in humankind’s adaptation to changing landscapes and demographics (Luzzadder-Beach and Beach 2006; Smardon 2004).
For understanding wetlands, the history of the Maya Lowlands includes agricultural evidence as early as 4600 BP, possible evidence for wetland management in the Archaic by 3500 BP, clear evidence of wetland management in the Preclassic, from 3200 to 1700 BP, and in the Classic 1700-1100 BP.
CLICK for report HERE

The above canals appear at first sight to have been drowned by rising sea levels similar to canals in Louisiana,
but this area of wetlands in Tabasco has been used for oil exploration making the above examples more likely to be well access channels, see Tabasco oil exploration canals for an update on oil exploration in Tabasco.