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SF Civil Maya Seceta in Engleza D BBC
SF Civil Maya Seceta in Engleza D BBC
22 February 2016
The question of how the Maya met their end is one of history's
most enduring mysteries. The Mayapeople survived; they even
managed to stage a long resistance to European rule. But by the
time the Spanish made landfall, the political and economic power
which had erected the region's iconic pyramids, and had at one
time sustained a population of some two million people, had
vanished.
El Castillo at the Mayan ruins at Tulum Quintana Roo, Mexico (Credit: 24BY36/Alamy)
The first Maya sites were built during the first millennium BC, and
the civilisation reached its height around AD600. (In the
chronology of Mesoamerica, the Maya sit between the earlier
Olmec and later Aztec civilisations). Archaeologists have
uncovered thousands of ancient Maya cities, most of which are
spread across southern Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, Belize and
Guatemala.
It’s likely that still more Maya ruins lie hidden beneath the region’s
thick tropical forest.
The Maya had a strong grasp of mathematics and
astronomy and used the only known written script in
Mesoamerica
The marvels the Maya left behind have earned them an enduring
mystique. But the way the civilisation met its end is every bit as
curious.
Apart from its dramatic scale, what makes the Maya collapse so
striking is that, despite decades of study, archaeologists still
cannot agree on what caused it. As with the Roman Empire, there
probably wasn’t one single culprit for the Maya’s downfall. But the
nature of their decline leads some researchers to believe that the
Maya civilisation fell victim to a major catastrophe – one able to
topple city after city in its wake.
Archaeologists still cannot agree on what caused the Maya collapse (Credit:
Travelstock44/Alamy)
There are abundant theories about what finished off the Maya.
There are the old favourites – invasion, civil war, collapsing trade
routes – but ever since the first Central American ancient climate
records were pieced together in the early 1990s, one theory has
become particularly popular: that the Maya civilisation was
ultimately doomed by a period of severe climate change.
The Maya cities which fell during the 9th Century droughts were
mostly located in the southern portion of their territory, in modern
day Guatemala and Belize. In the Yucatan peninsula to the north,
however, the Maya civilisation not only survived through these
droughts, it then began to flourish.
The number of stone calendar inscriptions declined in times of drought (Credit: Image
Source/Alamy)
There was a 70% decline in stone calendar inscriptions in the
second half of the 9th Century. This same pattern of decline is
also echoed in radiocarbon dates across the northern Maya
region, which indicate that wooden construction also dwindled
during the same time period. Importantly, this is the time that the
droughts are believed to have caused the collapse of the Maya
civilisation in the south – evidently the north didn’t come through
these droughts unscathed after all.
The north certainly fared better than the south, but the
region nevertheless suffered a significant decline
But the second decline the team identified does change our
understanding of the Maya’s story. After a short recovery during
the 10th Century (which, interestingly, was coincident with an
increase in rainfall), the researchers noticed another slump in
construction at numerous sites across the northern Maya territory:
stone carving and other building activity seems to have fallen by
almost half between AD1000 and 1075. What’s more, just like the
crisis 200 years earlier, the researchers discovered that this 11th
Century Maya decline also took place against a backdrop of
severe drought.
And not just any drought. The ones in the 9th Century had
certainly been severe. But the 11th Century brought the worst
drought that the region had seen for fully 2,000 years - a
“megadrought”.
The 11th Century Maya decline occurred during a period of severe drought (Credit: YAY
Media AS/Alamy)
If the first wave of droughts had finished off the Maya in the south,
it looks like the second wave may have brought on their demise in
the north.
With these findings, it looks even more likely that climate change
played a significant role in the Maya’s downfall. But how?
Most archaeological explanations for the collapse involve
agriculture. The Maya, like all large civilisations, were heavily
dependent on crops for their economic might - and of course to
sustain their vast workforce. The simplest explanation for the
Maya’s fall is that year-upon-year of low crop yields, brought on by
the droughts, may have gradually diminished the Maya’s political
influence, eventually leading to full-on societal disintegration.
Year-upon-year of low crop yields, brought on by the
droughts, may have gradually diminished the Maya’s
political influence
“We know that there was already increased warfare and socio-
political instability throughout the Maya area prior to the 9th
Century droughts,” says Julie Hoggarth at Baylor University in
Waco, Texas, who co-led December’s climate analysis.
Inter-city conflict is a pretty good way to break up a civilisation too;
it’s possible that the Maya just fought themselves apart. But that
still leaves the question of the droughts, and those well fitting
dates. Perhaps, then, it was a mixture of the two. As food stocks
shrank during the dry decades, competition for resources would
probably have become even more intense, perhaps eventually
reaching a tipping point which caused the ancient Maya civilisation
to fracture irreparably.
It's possible that the Maya just fought themselves apart (Credit: JORDI CAMÍ/Alamy)
But there’s at least one other explanation that doesn’t require any
warfare. It may not have been the Maya’s dark side that doomed
them, but their talents. Because, while the Maya were famously
great craftsmen, but they were also environmental sculptors.
To grow enough food to feed their millions, the Maya dug huge
systems of canals, sometimes hundreds of miles across, which
allowed them to drain and elevate the infertile wetlands which
cover much of the Maya heartland, producing new arable land
(some archaeologists call these “floating gardens”). The Maya
also cleared huge tracts of forest, both for agriculture and to make
room for their cities.
Deforestation to clear land for agriculture might have
exacerbated localised drying effects
Mesoamerica’s famous civilisation mysteriously fell about 1,000 years ago (Credit: Age
fotostock/Alamy)
Whatever the reason – or reasons – for the Maya’s collapse, we
do know something about the fate of the people who were left to
face its aftermath. Starting around AD1050, the Maya took to the
road. They abandoned the inland regions where their ancestors
had thrived, and made their way in droves towards the Caribbean
coast, or to other sources of water, such as the lakes and
sinkholes which occasionally punctuate the dense green of the
Maya’s former territory.
But then again, that had always been the case. One of the duties
of a Maya ruler was to commune with the gods to ensure a wet
year and good harvests. At sites across the Maya world,
archaeologists have dredged up human bones from the bottom of
lakes and sinkholes - thought to be doorways to the underworld:
grim evidence that the people resorted to sacrifice to appease
their deities. When the rains were good, and the civilisation
blossomed, it must have seemed like their prayers were being
answered.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160222-severe-droughts-explain-the-mysterious-fall-of-the-maya