Why did the maya prefer to capture people rather than take land when the fought wars

The Maya people from Central America were the strongest civilization of their time in this part of the world. Unlike the other people though, the Maya were not so interested in taking the land of the people they were defeating, but instead they were capturing the people and taking them back with them. The reason for this odd behavior was that the Maya used the captured people for two very important things for them, slavery and sacrifice. Some of the captured people were used as slaves as the Maya needed laborers to produce food so that they can sustain the relatively large population. The majority oft he captured people though were used as sacrifice for their gods. The sacrifice ceremonies were very important for their society and there were lot of rituals involved, with the people sacrificed to the gods being brutally murdered.

this is a good question! i'll do some research and come back when i have the answer!