Classic Maya collapse

The Classic Maya Collapse refers to the decline and abandonment of the Classic Period Maya cities of the southern Maya lowlands of Mesoamerica between the 8th and 9th centuries. The Classic Period of Mesoamerican chronology is generally defined as the period from 250 to 900 A.D., the last 100 years of which, from 800 A.D. to 900 A.D., are frequently referred to as the Terminal Classic. The Classic Maya Collapse is one of the biggest mysteries in archaeology. A larger perspective of civilizational collapse indicates that history is full of births and deaths of cities, societies, states, and civilizations; Easter Island and the Soviet Union are two examples from the extremes of possibilities. A collapse - or dramatic end to social and cultural developments that occurred at the end of the Maya Preclassic, but echoed elsewhere in Mesoamerica at the same time, is another study case. What makes the Classic Maya collapse so intriguing is 1) the profound heights reached culturally by the Classic Maya; and 2) the relative suddenness of the collapse - although this is not so dramatic relative to collapses elsewhere, manifested by the literal abandonment of great sacred-urban centers in the jungles of the Peten, Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico. The picture drawn by the great explorer and early Mayanist, Stephens, of great empty acropoleis in the middle of rainforest jungle has remained a spur to the imagination and the intrigue of the mystery.

The highly-advanced Maya centers of the southern lowlands went into decline during the 8th and 9th centuries and were abandoned shortly thereafter. Archaeologically, this decline is indicated by the cessation of monumental inscriptions and the reduction of large-scale architectural construction. That these abandoned cities were found centuries later, fully consumed by jungle, added to the mystery surrounding the Classic Maya Collapse. Substantial decipherment of Mayan hieroglyphs only occurred from the 1990s onwards. Exciting discoveries in the region are still being made by archeologists.

Kyle the god of failure is fat and dumb

A number of theories explaining the Collapse have been advanced, repudiated, and eventually replaced. The track record of the archeological community in interpreting the Maya has not been particularly good. Early on, it was thought the Classic Maya were a very peaceful, unwarlike people — and clearly they were not. Anthropologist Richard Wilk perceptively showed the very subjective opinions presented by theorists of the Classic Maya Collapse, who have projected American political concerns onto the Maya. Some eighty-eight different theories or variations of theories attempting to explain the Classic Maya Collapse have been identified. There is no universally accepted theory, though the drought theory is now gaining momentum as the leading explanation.

The Maya people did not actually disappear during the Classic Maya Collapse, and the entire Maya region did not collapse. Most of the southern Maya centers declined and were abandoned, while a few cities with access to water continued through this transitional period, and still other new ones were founded. The highest and best art and architecture come from the Classic Maya period — the survivors in later eras did not attain the same quality of civilization or make much further progress. The different years Maya cities collapsed provides for much debate among Mayanists studying the Collapse.

Current theories of the Classic Maya Collapse have been categorized into three models:

1. systemic ecological collapse — the Maya over-exploited the land and caused environmental problems for themselves;
2. political/warfare — a cultural theory holding that the elite fought too much and provided poor leadership; and
3. drought caused by climate change.

Of these models, systemic ecological collapse and political/warfare involve cultural or human-caused disaster, whereas the drought theory relies upon global and regional climate change beyond the control of the Maya. Through the years, cultural theories of Maya decline have included foreign invasion, peasant revolt, and the collapse of key trade routes. Supporters of cultural theories, including the Maya-induced ecological collapse, tend to be archeologists trained as cultural anthropologists. Physical scientists performed the research establishing the drought theory, although previous theories suggested drought as a factor. The drought theory was fully developed by Dr. Richardon B. Gill in The Great Maya Droughts (2000), and holds that a prolonged series of droughts brought about the Classic Maya Collapse.

Non-environmental theories

Foreign invasion

The archaeological evidence of the Toltec intrusion into Yucatán in Seibal, Peten suggests to some the theory of foreign invasion. Most Mayanists do not believe that foreign invasion was the main cause of the Classic Maya Collapse; they postulate that no one military defeat can explain or be the cause of the protracted and complex Classic Collapse process. Teotihuacan influence across the Maya region may have involved some form of military invasion, however it is generally noted that significant Teotihuacan-Maya interactions date from at least the Early Classic period, well before the episodes of Late Classic collapse.

Peasant revolt, revolution, or social turmoil

Archaeological evidence indicates that Maya building and expansion projects were at their peak from c. 730 to 790, with constant enlargement and building. The majority of the burden was placed on peasant workers in the cities. One theory attributes the collapse of the classic Maya to a hypothesized revolution among these lower classes. As life became more burdensome, work began to undermine the religious development and collective enterprise of ordinary people, according to this line of thinking. The increased burden of work may have caused people to abandon their values and revolt against the elite of society. This might help explain the abrupt collapse of elite functions, as well as unfinished buildings and ceremonial centers. Peasant revolt might also explain the evidence of the burning of temples and smashing of thrones. It is believed that once the elite lost ceremonial centers (and perhaps the water supplies built therein), they no longer had the power to sway people with religion through demonstrations and sacrifices. Peasant revolts throughout the empire would have happened slowly and at different times, which explains for some the gradual decay of Maya culture and power from c. 750 to 1050.

Even though the internal revolt theory may convince some, it still has its flaws. It is not directly documented in the surviving written record, although evidence of social turmoil has been found. Some have trouble believing that a religious ideology and social fabric strong enough to lead to the impressive surviving monuments would have been abandoned so violently and abruptly, or failed to adapt. The Maya successfully governed themselves and had opportunities to throw off oppressive rulers, much as the Greek city-states did, so it is difficult to imagine that a political problem caused the total abandonment of an entire region. Professor Arthur Demarest poses a suggestive question: "[W]hy in many areas [did not] Maya leadership respond with effective corrective measures for the stresses generated by internal, as well as external, factors[?]."

The population estimates of Classic Maya cities, while impressive given the terrain, are not so great as to disconnect the Maya elite completely from the conditions of the Maya commoners. Classic Maya lords were more akin to tribal chiefs or mayors than detached imperial royalty ruling millions of people over vast territories, as in the case of European or Oriental empires. Maya leaders had to inspire and lead their troops, and they must have demonstrated the qualities of good leaders to avoid the humiliation and sacrifice they knew was in store for losing Maya lords. The threat of warfare should have promoted a relatively good political system if it kept lords from being corrupted. Classic Maya peasant populations might easily have conspired with neighboring kings to unseat an unpopular ruler, who would then have been ritually tortured and sacrificed, to the delight of the formerly oppressed peasants. Assassination opportunities existed in the Classic Maya religious practice of piercing and bleeding the king's penis with a stingray spine so that the king could see a vision induced by blood loss and/or halucinogenic herbs. The Maya probably obtained some political balance due to the competition between their city-states and the political popularity necessary for royal survival. A variety of city-states suggests some of them ought to have resolved social tensions if those were the primary driving cause.

Revolutions, peasant revolts, and social turmoil change things, and often are followed by foreign wars, but they run their course. There are no documented revolutions that caused wholesale abandonment of entire regions. When lower classes or different cultural groups successfully revolt, they assume the higher positions of society or bring the elite lower -- but they do not leave. Warfare, revolution, civil war, internecine warfare, a peasant’s revolt, and dynastic struggle are all historical phenomena that normally resolve themselves and re-establish equilibrium. Social turmoil self-corrects over time. The revolutionary or class struggle theory for the Classic Collapse has no historical precedent. Revolutions invigorate nations, make them stronger usually, and then tend to be reversed as the social and economic pendulum swings back.

Collapse of trade routes

It has been hypothesized that the decline of the Maya is related to the collapse of their intricate trade systems, especially those connected to the central Mexican of Teotihuacán. Teotihuacán abruptly declined around c. 650 to 700, and the fall of this city is believed to have contributed to the sudden change in Maya economic and trade functions in the highlands, which may have resulted in a ripple effect of decline across the entire Maya world. Maya rulers relied heavily on tribute as essential to their dominance and control of subjects. As cities became more specialized, this theory goes, they relied more heavily on trade. The Maya, it has been said, were not equipped to handle trade at such a magnitude because the absence of the wheel and beasts of burden made it difficult to move heavy amounts of goods from one place to another.

Trade would always result from significant levels of human population. Much of the Classic Maya trade was in obsidian, feathers, cacao, and other luxury items. Staple foods were produced where the people lived, and storage was not far advanced in the humid environment. The collapse of trade routes would most likely be a temporary phenomenon - or one that resulted from failure of the entire agricultural economy. Trade route discontinuation is most likely an effect, rather than a cause of, the Classic Maya collapse.

Environmental theories

Catastrophic event

The term "catastrophism" has been used to describe the theory that a single natural disaster caused the Classic Maya Collapse. The catastrophic event theory focuses on one or more natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanic eruptions, as the cause of the collapse of the Mayans. The lack of archaeological evidence makes it unlikely that a single natural disaster caused the Classic Maya collapse. Catastrophism has been repudiated by Mayanists because no volcanic eruption or other single catastrophic event has been discovered in the archeological record. Volcanic activity is suspected by Dr. Richardson Gill of cooling the climate and exacerbating drought in the Classic Maya region, and the drought theory generally is supported by the scientific evidence. Drought in the Maya regions did not occur as one event, but instead as the effect of climate change occurring over many decades.

Epidemic diseases

The disease theory is also a contender for explaining the Classic Maya Collapse. Widespread disease could explain some rapid depopulation and might inhibit recovery over the long run. There are no documented cases of diseases or plagues killing off 100% of any human population. By reducing population, disease lessens pressure in society, eliminates the need to farm marginal land or destroy the environment, and increases the ratio of resources to people. The Bubonic Plague, for example, markedly increased the value of labor and helped bring an end to serfdom. The Bubonic Plague left many survivors. The epidemic disease theory is not widely accepted. More probable is that disease, always a product of famine, resulted from a series of prolonged droughts. The consequences of drought and famine make inhabitants more susceptible to disease. Disease probably hastened the Classic Maya Collapse, but the driving force was probably the lack of water, which led to famine, which then led to disease.

Drought theory

Mega-droughts hit the Yucatán Peninsula and Petén Basin areas with particular ferocity, for several reasons:

1. Thin tropical soils, which decline in fertility and become unworkable when deprived of forest cover;
2. Regular seasonal drought, drying up surface water;
3. The absence of ground water;
4. The rarity of lakes, especially in the Yucatán Peninsula;
5. The absence of river systems, such as in the Petén Basin;
6. Tropical vegetation which requires regular monsoon rain;, and
7. Heavy dependence upon water-based intensive agricultural techniques, particularly in the Classic period.

The colonial Spanish officials accurately documented cycles of drought, famine, disease, and war, providing a reliable historical record of the basic drought pattern in the Maya region.

Climatic factors were first implicated in the Collapse as early as 1931 by Mayanists Thomas Gann and J.E.S. Thompson. In The Great Maya Droughts, Richardson Gill gathers and analyzes an array of climatic, historical, hydrologic, tree ring, volcanic, geologic, lake bed, and archeological research, and demonstrates that a prolonged series of droughts most likely caused the Classic Maya Collapse. The drought theory provides a comprehensive explanation, because non-environmental and cultural factors (excessive warfare, foreign invasion, peasant revolt, less trade, etc.) can all be explained by the effects of prolonged drought on Classic Maya civilization.

Drought has been shown in other regions to have resulted in the complete abandonment of cities and regions. Climatic changes are, with increasing frequency, found to be major drivers in the rise and fall of civilizations all over the world.Professors Harvey Weiss of Yale University and Raymond S. Bradley of the University of Massachusetts have written: "Many lines of evidence now point to climate forcing as the primary agent in repeated social collapse." In a separate publication, Weiss illustrates an emerging understanding of scientists:

"Within the past five years new tools and new data for archaeologists, climatologists, and historians have brought us to the edge of a new era in the study of global and hemispheric climate change and its cultural impacts. The climate of the Holocene, previously assumed static, now displays a surprising dynamism, which has affected the agricultural bases of pre-industrial societies. The list of Holocene climate alterations and their socio-economic effects has rapidly become too complex for brief summary."

The drought theory holds that rapid climate change in the form of severe drought brought about the Classic Maya collapse. According to the particular version put forward by Gill in The Great Maya Droughts,

"[Studies of] Yucatecan lake sediment cores . . . provide unambiguous evidence for a severe 200-year drought from AD 800 to 1000 . . . the most severe in the last 7,000 years . . . precisely at the time of the Maya Collapse."

Climatic modeling, tree ring data, and historical climate data show that cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere is associated with drought in Mesoamerica. Northern Europe suffered extremely low temperatures around the same time as the Maya droughts. The same connection between drought in the Maya areas and extreme cold in northern Europe was found again at the beginning of the 20th century). Volcanic activity, within and outside Mesoamerica, is also correlated with colder weather and resulting drought, as the effects of the Tambora volcano eruption in 1815 indicate.

Mesoamerican civilization provides a remarkable exception: civilization prospering in the tropical swampland. The Maya are often conceived as having lived in a rainforest, but technically, they lived in a seasonal desert without access to stable sources of drinking water. The exceptional accomplishments of the Maya are all the more remarkable because of their engineered response to the fundamental environmental difficulty of relying upon rainwater rather than permanent sources of water. “The Maya succeeded in creating a civilization in a seasonal desert by creating a system of water storage and management which was totally dependent on consistent rainfall.” The constant need for water kept the Maya on the edge of survival. “Given this precarious balance of wet and dry conditions, even a slight shift in the distribution of annual precipitation can have serious consequences.”

Water and civilization were vitally connected in ancient Mesoamerica. Archeologist Vernon Scarborough believes water management and access were critical to the development of Maya civilization. The Olmecs, an early Mesoamerican civilization in the region, mastered the low-lying swampy land of the Gulf Coast region, surely with intensive agricultural methods. The Postclassic-era Aztecs, who founded their capital Tenochtitlan in 1324 A.D. on a swampy island in a huge lake system, had grown to be the largest and most powerful empire in Mesoamerica when Cortes landed at Veracruz to begin his conquest of Mexico. In less than 200 years, Tenochtitlan grew from an unimpressive swampy abode to the most powerful Mesoamerican capital. The famous view of Tenochtitlan first seen by the conquistadores in 1519 was the end result of intensive agricultural techniques applied to one of the largest permanent sources of agricultural water in Mesoamerica. This meteoric rise would not have been possible without intensive agricultural techniques applied to a huge supply of agricultural water, located in what can be considered the most massive permanent bajo in Mesoamerica, the Valley of Mexico. Not coincidentally, Punta de Chimino, the Petexbatun Lake center heavily populated by Maya as late as 830 AD, turned itself into an island in a lake. Many Classic Maya sites were located on rivers, near lakes, or directly above underground water supplies. But the largest Classic Maya city, Tikal, had no water other than what was collected from rainwater and stored in underground storage facilities (termed chultuns). Archaeologists working in Tikal during the last century utilized the ancient underground facilities to store water for their own use.

The drought theory is the only hypothesis with a clear chain of causation explaining the entire Classic Maya Collapse. Other theories attribute the Collapse to a multitude of factors, but do not precisely state how they interacted, in what sequence, or provide historical precedents for the type of abandonment seen from the Classic Maya collapse. The drought theory does not blame the Maya; Dr. Gill does not believe the Maya did anything to cause their own Collapse. Further, the drought theory can be reconciled with evidence of warfare in the Petexbatun region of Guatemala: Late Classic warfare seemed to take place near water, lakes, and strategic access to the flow of water, as if water was the last and most critical resource in the region. A Google Earth view of the Petexbatun reveals a very low-lying area, strewn with lakes, and holding perhaps the last wet farmland of the southern lowlands in the terminal Classic Period.

Critics of the drought theory wonder why the southern and central lowland cities were abandoned and the northern cities like Chichen Itza, Uxmal, and Coba continued to thrive. One critic argued that Chichen Itza revamped its political, military, religious, and economic institutions away from powerful lords or kings. Gill indicates the water table in the southern lowlands was too deep, that the Maya there had to rely exclusively upon rainwater; but that the northern Yucatán ground water was closer to the surface and obtainable through cenotes and other water access points. Sylvanus Griswold Morley, a noted American archaeologist and Mayanist of the early 20th century, noted that the location of cenotes was the prime factor governing the distribution of ancient Maya population in the northern Yucatán. Inhabitants of the northern Yucatán also had access to seafood, which salted might have explained the survival of Chichen Itza and Mayapan, cities away from the coast but within reach of coastal food supplies. Archeologists have clearly demonstrated the much greater reliance of the coastal Maya on seafood. The Classic Maya Collapse, on the other hand, affected most profoundly the cities too far from the coast to benefit by that source of food. Critics of the drought theory also point to current weather patterns: much heavier rainfall in the southern lowlands compared to the lighter amount of rain in the northern Yucatán. Drought theory supporters state that the entire regional climate changed, including the amount of rainfall, so that modern rainfall patterns are not indicative of rainfall from 800 to 900 A.D. Archeologist Heather McKillop found a significant rise in sea level along the coast nearest the southern Maya lowlands, coinciding with the end of the Classic period, and indicating climate change.

Systemic ecological collapse model

Some ecological theories of Maya decline focus on the worsening agricultural and resource conditions in the late Classic period. The archaeological community originally thought that the majority of Maya agriculture was dependent on a simple slash-and-burn system. Based on this method, the hypothesis of soil exhaustion was advanced by O.F. Cook in 1921. Similar soil exhaustion assumptions are associated with erosion, intensive agricultural, and savanna grass competition. Advocates of a human-induced ecological underpinning for the Collapse point out that this does not necessarily preclude simultaneous revolts, wars, disasters, drought, or diseases, caused or exacerbated by the ecological strain. But were ecological problems a cause or the effect of something else?

More recent investigations have shown a complicated variety of intensive agricultural techniques utilized by the Maya, explaining the high population of the Classic Maya polities. Modern archaeologists now comprehend the sophisticated intensive and productive agricultural techniques of the ancient Maya, and several of the Maya agricultural methods have not yet been reproduced. Intensive agricultural methods were developed and utilized by all the Mesoamerican cultures to boost their food production and give them a competitive advantage over less skillful peoples. These intensive agricultural methods included canals, terracing, raised fields, ridged fields, chinampas, the use of human faeces as fertilizer, seasonal swamps or bajos, using muck from the bajos to create fertile fields, dikes, dams, irrigation, water reservoirs, several types of water storage systems, hydraulic systems, swamp reclamation, swidden systems, and other agricultural techniques which have not yet been fully comprehended. Systemic ecological collapse is said to be evidenced by deforestation, siltation, and the decline of biological diversity.

In addition to mountainous terrain, Mesoamericans successfully exploited the very problematic tropical rainforest for 1,500 years. The agricultural techniques utilized by the Maya were entirely dependent upon ample supplies of water. The Maya thrived in what to most peoples would be uninhabitable territory. Their success over two millennia in this environment was "amazing." The self-induced ecological collapse model gives little credit to the Maya and overstates the scale of environmental damage they could do to themselves in the absence of global climate change. Climate change not caused by the Maya destroyed a number of civilizations in the Holocene period.

The 2006 film Apocalypto adopted the systemic ecological collapse model, portraying a brutal Mayan city still clinging to Classic era values during the end of the post-Classic era cutting down too many trees, corpses left to rot in the sun, crop failures, diseases, excessive limestone plaster use, etc.

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External links

• Classic Maya Warfare
• Current Maya Collapse Theory
• A Map of territories during the 100 year war between the Kingdoms of (Tikal) Mutal and Kaan (Calakmul)