This is Why the Maya Abandoned Their Cities

BY ELIZABETH NIX

The ancient Maya, whose early settlements date back to about 2,000 B.C., lived in present-day southern
Mexico and northern Central America. As a civilization, they are recognized for their sophisticated
calendar systems and hieroglyphic writing as well as their achievements in areas such as agriculture and
architecture. Around 250 A.D., the Maya entered what’s now known as the Classic Period, an era in
which they built flourishing cities with temples and palaces, and population size peaked. However, by
the end of the Classic Period, around 900 A.D., almost all of the major cities in what was then the heart
of Maya civilization—the southern lowlands region, in present-day northern Guatemala and neighboring
portions of Mexico, Belize and Honduras—had been abandoned. The collapse didn’t happen all at once;
instead, it’s believed to have occurred over time from place to place, between about the late 8th and
925. Exactly why any of this transpired, though, is a mystery.

Scholars have suggested a number of potential reasons for the downfall of Maya civilization in the
southern lowlands, including overpopulation, environmental degradation, warfare, shifting trade routes
and extended drought. It’s likely that a complex combination of factors was behind the collapse. What is
certain is that the Mayans didn’t disappear in the aftermath of the collapse. Instead, cities in the
northern lowlands region, such as Chichen Itza and later Mayapan (both located in present-day Yucatan,
Mexico), rose to prominence. The Maya also established cities in the highlands region, such as
Q’umarkaj (in present-day Guatemala).

The Spanish conquistadores arrived in the early 1500s and the last independent Mayan city, Nojpeten
(in present-day Guatemala), fell to Spanish troops in 1697. The ancient cities were largely forgotten until
the 19th century, when their ruins started to be uncovered by explorers and archeologists. Today, the
Maya continue to reside in their ancestral homelands in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El
Salvador.

Researchers Finally Uncover What Wiped Out The Mayan Civilization

By Caroline Redmond

Published August 3, 2018

September 18, 2019

The study's analysis revealed that a huge decrease in annual rainfall and a drop in humidity contributed
to the drought that ended Mayan civilization.

Many theories have been explored to try and explain the collapse of the Maya civilization. For years,
evidence trying to prove these theories had been inconclusive – until now.
The Maya Empire, located in what is now present-day Guatemala, was a cultural epicenter that excelled
at agriculture, pottery, writing, and mathematics. They reached their peak of power in the sixth century
A.D., however, by 900 A.D. most of their great cities were abandoned.

For centuries researchers have tried to discover exactly how this great civilization could have fallen apart
so quickly. A new report in Science, released on August 3, has finally given quantifiable evidence
confirming the most widely-believed theory to explain how the Mayan civilization met its end: drought.

The key to unlocking the mystery ended up being located in Lake Chichancanab on the Yucatan
Peninsula. For the report, researchers examined oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in sediment from the
lake, which was close enough to the heart of Mayan civilization to provide an accurate sample of the
climate.

For the report, Nicholas Evans, a Cambridge University research student and co-author of the paper,
measured the isotopic composition of water found in the lake’s sediment to quantify exactly how much
precipitation rates fell during the end of the Mayan civilization.

According to the Washington Post, analyzing sediment cores is a common practice for discovering
information about the past. Scientists are able to inspect the dirt, layer by layer, and record the
information found in the soil to construct an accurate timeline of the past conditions.

After examining the sediments samples, Evans, along with his team of researchers, concluded that
annual rainfall levels declined 41 to 54 percent in the area surrounding the lake for several long periods
over roughly 400 years, according to IFLScience.

The report also revealed that humidity in the area dropped by 2 to 7 percent. These two factors
combined to had a devastating effect on the civilization’s agriculture production.

Because these drought conditions occurred frequently over hundreds of years, the civilization must not
have been able to build up food reserves enough to make up for the drop in agricultural production,
eventually leading to their demise.

Why Did Mayan Civilization Disappear

Josh Giovo/Wikimedia Commons

Ruins of a Mayan temple.

Even though this paper ties up some loose ends surrounding the Mayan people, some big unanswered
questions still remain, like what precisely brought on this massive and sustained drought?
A previous study showed that the Mayan’s deforestation could have contributed to the dry conditions,
decreasing the moisture of the area and destabilizing the soil.

Evans said that the drought could have also been caused by changes to the atmospheric circulation and
a decline in tropical cyclone frequency.

Matthew Lachinet, a professor in geosciences at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, who was not
involved in the study, told the Washington Post that this study is impactful because it offers insights into
how humans can change the climate around them.

“Humans are affecting climate,” Lachinet said. “We’re making it warmer and it’s projected to become
drier in Central America. What we could end up with is double-whammy of drought. If you coincide
drying from natural causes with drying from human causes, then it amplified the strength of that
drought.”

Despite these new findings, there is still much to learn about the collapse of Mayan civilization.

ANCIENT ALIENS

The ancient Mayans had contact with alien visitors who left behind evidence of their existence,
according to a new Mexican documentary.

Sundance winner Juan Carlos Rulfo's Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond is currently in
production for release next year to coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar, reports the Wrap.

Producer Raul Julia-Levy said the documentary-makers were working in cooperation with the Mexican
government for what he said was "the good of mankind". He said the order to collaborate had come
directly from the country's president, Álvaro Colom Caballeros.

"Mexico will release codices, artefacts and significant documents with evidence of Mayan and
extraterrestrial contact, and all of their information will be corroborated by archaeologists," he said.
"The Mexican government is not making this statement on their own – everything we say, we're going
to back it up."

Caballeros himself was conspicuous by his absence from the statement released by Julia-Levy. So far, the
minister of tourism for the Mexican state of Campeche, Luis Augusto García Rosado, appears to be the
highest-ranking government official to go on record confirming the discovery of extraterrestrial life, but
he's not holding back.

In a statement, Rosado spoke of contact "between the Mayans and extraterrestrials, supported by
translations of certain codices, which the government has kept secure in underground vaults for some
time". In a telephone conversation with the Wrap, he also spoke of "landing pads in the jungle that are
3,000 years old".
The documentary is believed to focus in part on previously unexplored sections of a Mayan site at
Calakmul, Mexico, as well as a number of sites in Guatemala, where officials are also backing the
documentary.

"Guatemala, like Mexico, home to the ancient-yet-advanced Mayan civilisation … has also kept certain
provocative archeological discoveries classified, and now believes that it is time to bring forth this
information in the new documentary," Guatemala's minister of tourism, Guillermo Novielli Quezada,
said in a statement.

The Mayan calendar ends on 21 December 2012, a fact which conspiracy theorists have used to predict
imminent apocalypse. However, according to Mayanist scholars there is no evidence that the Mayans
themselves expected cataclysmic events to occur once the calendar had reached its denouement. More
likely, it would simply mark the beginning of another 5,125-year-long cycle.

Alien Gods?

By: Gaia Staff | Nov. 5th, 2017

The ancient Mayan civilization of Central America has astounded archeologists and researchers for
decades and it seems that more and more puzzling discoveries related to this ancient culture continue
to be made. These were a people who were obsessed with astronomy, boasting a highly advanced
calendar that is still accurate to this day. But were the Mayans gods who imbued the ancient civilization
with their advanced knowledge actually ancient alien gods?

Were The Ancient Gods Aliens?

There were a couple names for a feathered serpent-like god in the Mayan pantheon who descended
from the heavens and taught these ancient people about astronomy, architecture, and construction,
among other things. Known as Quetzalcoatl in the Nahuatl language, or Kukulkan in Mayan, this entity
was highly revered and, upon his departure, told the Mayans that he would one day return to Earth. This
date was calculated as December 21st, 2012, which caused a lot of excitement and fear leading up to
the day that many assumed could be the apocalypse.

While this prophecy apparently failed to come to fruition, Erich von Däniken says he believes that this
date was calculated based off of our Judeo-Christian calendar, which is somewhat ambiguous in its
relation to the birth of Christ. Von Däniken says that there are, more or less, 20 years around the day
that we think Christ was born, distorting our prediction of the return of Quetzalcoatl. This means that
we still have 15 years to see whether the Mayan prediction will actually come true.

But Von Däniken contests that the return of Quetzalcoatl wouldn’t entail a feathered serpent that
descends from the sky, but potentially an extraterrestrial, as seen in the depictions of rulers appearing
to pilot machines. There is a recurrent theme of these carvings, with human faces covered by what
appear to be helmets with breathing apparatuses in their mouths. Von Däniken says that these devices
that covered their mouths were likely filtering air, so as to prevent infection from bacteria or viruses.

In a tomb at Palenque, a carving of the 2nd to last ruler of the ancient Mayans, Pakal, was found
appearing to control an upward-facing machine with flames and smoke shooting out the back. While
archeologists have claimed that this carving actually represented the tree of life or a descent into the
underworld, two leading Mayan epigraphers have stated that the inscriptions around the tomb detail an
ascent into the cosmos.

Inside a sarcophagus, the remains of this ancient ruler were found, though the body was significantly
taller than the average height of the ancient Mayans and it appeared to have an unusual bone structure.
Pakal was also known to have ruled for 68 years and lived to the age of 80, much longer than the
average lifespan for that era.

Did The Mayans Have Contact With Aliens?

There continue to be inexplicable discoveries made regarding the ancient Mayans that inspire curiosity
and fuel the idea that they may have been visited by ancient alien gods. The pyramids at Tikal are
another anomaly that add to the intrigue, in the sense that they are 40 kilometers from a body of water.
Typically, ancient civilizations would build cities on or near a large water source, however Tikal
potentially hosted close to 100,000 citizens without one. The citizens would have gathered water from
rainfall and stored it in reservoirs for use, but why would they go out of their way to build a massive city
in such an inconvenient location?

Von Däniken points to one of the glyphs on a stepped pyramid where an inscription claims that it was a
spot where the ancient gods visited from the heavens. These pyramids were impressively built
throughout the Mayan empire, with 60 of them found at Tikal alone. The more well-known Mayan
pyramids, including the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon are
found at Teotihuacan. These pyramids align with the three stars in the belt of the constellation Orion,
just like the pyramids at Giza.

The pyramids were also built with a layer of Mica, a mineral not found anywhere in Central America.
Mica would have had to been imported some 2,000 – 3,000 miles away, from modern day Brazil,
without the luxury of wheels. Mica is highly conductive and is used for capacitors and other electrical
means in our modern technology, making its presence all the more intriguing. Did aliens help the
Mayans transport this conductive material to the pyramids for electrical purposes?

Another interesting recent discovery below the temples at Teotihuacan was the presence of mercury.
While mainstream archeology sees this as an ancient fascination with the shiny, but highly poisonous
substance, others think that it may have been used as a fuel source for the ancient alien gods’
technology. Much like mica being a conductive mineral, mercury is also a conductor of electricity. Did
the ancient Mayans go to such great length to store a lake of toxic mercury under their pyramids just to
honor the dead or perform ceremonies? Or were they using it to power mercurially advanced
technology?
This Song's a Killer: The Strange Tale of "Gloomy Sunday"

BY BILL DEMAIN

AUGUST 16, 2011

Dr Varga József via Wiki Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0, Unknown via Wiki Commons 

DR VARGA JÓZSEF VIA WIKI COMMONS // CC BY-SA 3.0, UNKNOWN VIA WIKI COMMONS

In Vienna, a teenage girl drowned herself while clutching a piece of sheet music. In Budapest, a
shopkeeper killed himself and left a note that quoted from the lyrics of the same song. In London, a
woman overdosed while listening to a record of the song over and over.

The piece of music that connects all these deaths is the notorious “Gloomy Sunday.” Nicknamed the
“Hungarian suicide song,” it has been linked to over one hundred suicides, including the one of the man
who composed it.

Of course, this might all be an urban legend.

One thing’s for sure, though. “Gloomy Sunday’s” composer Rezso Seress did take his life, and the
success of his greatest hit may have been a contributing factor.

In 1933, the Hungarian-born Seress (née Rudi Spitzer) was a 34-year-old struggling songwriter.

Some accounts have him living in Paris, others Budapest. The story goes that after his girlfriend left him,
he was so depressed that he wrote the melody that became “Gloomy Sunday.” A minor-key ribbon of
blue smoke, the tune was given an equally melancholy lyric - in Hungarian - by Seress’s friend, the poet
Laszlo Javor. Some reports claim it was Javor’s girlfriend who left him, inspiring the song as a poem first.
Others say that Seress wrote his own lyric, about war and apocalypse, then Javor later changed it to a
heartbreak ballad.

Whatever the case, “Szomorú Vasárnap,” as it was titled, didn’t make much of a splash at first. But two
years later, a recorded version by Pál Kálmar was connected to a rash of suicides in Hungary. The song
was then allegedly banned. Short of learning Hungarian and trawling through Budapest newspapers
from the 1930s, it is impossible to verify any of this (Hungary does historically have one of the higher
suicide rates in the world - approximately 46 out of every 100,000 people take their own lives there
every year).

But it certainly makes for a juicy story. And it did at the time, too, because music publishers from
America and England soon came calling.

Tin Pan Alley tunesmith Sam M. Lewis and British theater lyricist Desmond Carter each wrote an English
translation of the song. It was Lewis's version, recorded in 1936 by Hal Kemp and his Orchestra, that
caught on.
Sam Lewis, best known for chirpy hits such as “I’m Gonna Sit Write Down And Write Myself A Letter,”
stayed close to the bitter despair of the original. Here’s his second verse:

“Gloomy is Sunday, with shadows I spend it all

My heart and I have decided to end it all

Soon there'll be candles and prayers that are sad, I know

Let them not weep, let them know that I’m glad to go

Death is no dream, for in death I'm caressing you

With the last breath of my soul I'll be blessing you.”

Lewis did make one concession to commerciality by tacking on a third verse that beamed a ray of light
into the tune’s darkness. It began:

“Dreaming, I was only dreaming,

I wake and I find you asleep in the deep of my heart, dear.”

In 1941, Billie Holiday recorded the definitive version of “Gloomy Sunday.” Having the hard-living Lady
Day associated with the song certainly upped the tragedy ante.

Despite conflicting reports, the song was never officially banned in the U.S., though it was in England. In
the early ‘40s, the BBC deemed the song “too upsetting” for the public, then later said that only
instrumental versions could be played on the radio.

In 1984, “Gloomy Sunday” was in the news again, by association, when Ozzy Osbourne was taken to
court by the parents of a teen who shot himself while listening to the rocker’s song “Suicide Solution.” In
1999, a German film, Ein Lied von Liebe und Tod (Gloomy Sunday - A Song of Love and Death), told the
story of a doomed love triangle and a song that triggered a chain of suicides. And in recent years, the
song has been recorded by such artists as Elvis Costello, Sarah McLachlan and Heather Nova.

What Became of Rezso Seress?

During World War II, he was put in a labor camp by the Nazis, which he survived. After that, he worked
in the theater and the circus, where he was a trapeze artist. He later returned to songwriting, though he
never had another hit as big as “Gloomy Sunday.”

In fact, the story goes that when the song first became a success, Seress attempted to reconcile with the
ex who inspired it. Shortly after, he heard that she had poisoned herself, and there was a copy of the
sheet music of the song nearby (in other versions of the story, she left a note with just two words:
"Gloomy Sunday"). Whether that’s true or not, Seress himself did commit suicide, in 1968, jumping from
the window of a Budapest apartment building.
Seress once wrote of his conflicted emotions towards his morbid masterpiece: “I stand in the midst of
this deadly success as an accused man. This fatal fame hurts me. I cried all of the disappointments of my
heart into this song, and it seems that others with feelings like mine have found their own hurt in it.”