Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Does anyone know of any evidence, artifacts, ancient texts, hieroglyphics, scrolls that relate or point to the concept of aquaponics?

I think the Aztec's were the first ones with their chinampas islands.

The tradition of aquaponics can be tracedback to the ancient Aztecs, who grew plants on stationary islands called chinampas and manually drew in waste from the surrounding canals to nourish their plants...



http://library.thinkquest.org/16325/y-farm.html

The is evidence that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon... were an aquaponic concept...

Ahh... beaten by a phone call...

Thanks Charlie and Rupe!

Found this site as well:

http://www.advancedsymbiotics.com/nativ ... aquaponic/

The Balinese had (and still have) a bit of an aquaponics element to their rice paddy irrigation techniques too. Apparently ducks are important for pest control and for contributing nutrients (this I heard anecdotally yesterday from someone who just got back from there, and from a 5sec google just now). Also, fish and invertebrates lived in the rice paddies and irrigation canals and were utilised as human food. An anthropologist called Stephen Lansing has written heaps about it, although not much on that aspect of it. Really interesting stuff for a lot of reasons (role of ritual in keeping it all running and coordinated etc.) if that kinda stuff floats your boat.

Also first post for me. Hello to all the fish people!

'ello octofish

Ducks are used by most asian countries to clean fields and paddys after a harvest. Where ever you have a water based crop you will all so have the local aquatic species being used as a food sourse by the people.

I read somewhere the fish were also used to reduce to mosquito population which would breed in the water.

Before the Aztecs, the Mayans used extensive canals throughout their cities. They grew fish in them, and aquatic plants, though most evidence suggests that the aquatic plants were used to fertilize the soil in more traditional agriculture. That is, however, filtered through the lense of archeologists who probably had no idea about Aquaponics. You have to give props to the native population of the Americas for their horticulture skills. They took two plants from the poisonous nightshade family and gave us the important crops of potatoes and tomatoes, and took a shaggy little grass and made corn. No wonder they never had the time to come up with the wheel.