What Did the Ancient Mayans Use for Transportation?
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The Mayans connected their cities and temples with a form of paved roadways and accessed more remote areas via canoe through the region’s abundant waterways. Because the Mayans had no beasts of burden, road transport depended on human feet.
The paved roads, or sacbeob, made transportation through the thick jungles much easier. Each sacbe was raised above the ground in the same way Roman roads in Europe were, and in some cases were as much as 8 feet high. Along these wide avenues, slave chains transported trade goods inland from population center to population center. Along the coast, immense 50-foot-long wooden canoes carried large quantities of goods to cities and other distribution points.
