MAYAN WARS: The Environment Strikes Back
Catastrophic Event
Epidemic Disease
Drought (as previously listed)
- The term "catastrophism" has been used to describe the theory that a single natural disaster caused the Classic Maya Collapse. The lack of archaeological evidence makes it unlikely that a single natural disaster caused the Classic Maya collapse.
- The Mayan drought was not a catastrophic event because it did not occur as one event, but instead as the effect of climate change occurring over many decades.
Epidemic Disease
- Widespread disease could explain some rapid depopulation and might inhibit recovery over the long run.
- One theory states that disease can actually be helpful in some situations, 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.
- 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 (as previously listed)
- 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 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.
- 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 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. 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 (a type of sinkhole containing groundwater) 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