"An ingenious use of fish leftovers recycled as property fences."

I agree. Very ingenious. Shell is actually a very good building material. Especially if you live on the coast where there is no stone. And hey, it's lasted 4,000 years already and it looks to me it could be here another 4,000!

Basically they took lemons and made lemonade. Quite ingenious if you ask me. Those who dismiss these constructions as simple trash piles are missing the point entirely and completely insulting the intelligence of the people who built them. Just because it was built gradually doesn't mean it was unintentional. Are we to somehow believe that as these walls rose 20 feet tall that the residents inside the walls turned around and said, "oh crap, where'd that come from?" They could have easily just dumped them in one big pile (as other people in the area did) but they didn't. They dumped them in a circle around their village.

They knew exactly what they were doing. I live in this area and people do the same thing today after oyster roasts. They add them to their driveway until over time they have a nice shell driveway. The shell driveway isn't an accidental or unintentional outcome. I guess future archaeologists will say this was just a trash dump in front of these people's homes.

Gary Daniels
Author, "Mayan Calendar Prophecies: Predictions for 2012-2052"
Creator, LostWorlds.org, TheRealMayanProphecies.com
[www.LostWorlds.org]
[www.TheRealMayanProphecies.com]