What happened to the Mayan Civilization?
Ecological Destruction vs. Warfare
By: Lena Jaurequi
Estenia Garcia
Angel Batrez
Hannah Quinn
Luis Francisco Rivera
The Maya Civilization is an ancient Mesoamerican society that can be dated between
1800 BC and 1500 AD. With their magnificent architecture, advanced knowledge of
mathematics and astronomy, the Maya dominated the ancient world. The Mayans constructed
extravagant temples, pyramids, monuments that stretched throughout their territory.
Figure 1 depicts the expansion of the Maya civilization Maya civilization spread through the
lowlands of the
Yucatan Peninsula
which covers part of
modern day
southern Mexico,
and expanding down
to Honduras, Belize,
Guatemala and
western El Salvador
(Figure 1). The
timeline of Maya
civilization can be
categorized between
the Pre-Classic
Maya (1800 BC-250
AD approx.) and the
Classic Maya (250- 1500 AD approx.). Around 1800 BC early Mayan settlements appeared to be
growing crops such as corn (maize), beans, squash (calabasa). During the Middle Pre-classic
(900- 300 BC), Mayan farmers began to expand their presence over the highland and lowland
regions. This period of Mayan gave root to Mayan culture such as pyramid building, stone
monuments, city constructions and other cultural traits. These traits demonstrate the beginning of
the Mayan culture and the shift from a hunter -gatherer community to an agricultural society.
The late pre classic to the beginning of the post classic (250 AD- 900 AD) was essentially the
rise of Mayan civilization. Many historians mark 250 AD as the golden age of the Maya Empire.
During this period, the civilization grew around 40 cities with a population of 5,000 and 50,000
people. It is estimated that during this period the civilization could have reached 2 million
people. The construction of elaborate temples and palaces, the invention of the number zero, the
creation of a calendar system and a complex irrigation system and water reservoirs were just
some of the accomplishments the Maya made during this period.
Unfortunately through the late eighth century and the end of the ninth century, classic
sites and cities in the southern lowlands were abandoned and by the beginning of the Postclassic period (900 AD- 1500 AD) regions in those areas had fallen completely. However, other
regions during this period such as Chichen Itza, Uxmal and Mayapan still flourished up until
1500. By the time the Spanish invaded the Americas, most of the Maya were scattered
throughout different villages and agricultural communities. (See Figure 2)
The fall of the Maya
civilization has remained a mystery.
Archeologists, historians and
scholars have debated several
competing theories. However, there
are two theories that seem to stand
out: Ecological destruction and
warfare. Ecological destruction
theory argues that the fall was due to
major ecological droughts, slash and
burn methods and land clearing for
building monuments and other
structures which then would have led
to environmental destruction. The
warfare argument believes that there
was constant warfare between local
powers, city states and hierarchal
fights between the noble families
which then would have led to
political, social and economic
instability.
Figure 2 depicts the possible migration during the Post-­‐ classic era. Within the ecological destruction
theory is the argument that the Maya
fell due to population growth. Jared Diamond explains the negative effects on the environment
due to population growth.
They grew corn by means of a modified version of swidden slash-and-burn agriculture, in
which forest is cleared, crops are grown in the resulting clearing for a few years until the
soil is exhausted, and then the field is abandoned for fifteen to twenty years until
regrowth of wild vegetation restores the soil's fertility. Because most of the land under a
Swidden agricultural system is fallow at any given time, it can support only modest
population densities.
Since corn is only able to grow in hot and dry conditions, the Yucatan posed a perfect habitat for
it; therefore it was one of their main food resources and grew it exponentially. However a
Swidden slash-and-burn agriculture stresses the environment making it difficult for a year round
growth in corn. Diamond then continues stating that Maya population was growing rapidly
meaning their food supply also had to grow as fast as their population in order to support a large
number of people. Unfortunately since slash and burn was being practiced most of the land was
useless and depleted of nutrients for an on-going growth of corn and other food sources.
Therefore many farmers abandoned the once fertile fields, this meant:
That the burden of feeding the extra population formerly dependent on the hills now
fell increasingly on the valley floor, and that more and more people were competing for
the food grown on that one square mile of bottomland. That would have led to fighting
among the farmers themselves for the best land, or for any land… Because the king was
failing to deliver on his promises of rain and prosperity, he would have been the
scapegoat for this agricultural failure, which explains why the last that we hear of any
king is A.D. 822, and why the royal palace was burned around A.D. 850...
The repeated occurrence of droughts, as inferred by climatologists from evidence of lake
evaporation preserved in lake sediments, and as summarized by Gill in The Great Maya
Droughts. The rise of Maya civilization may have been facilitated by a rainy period
beginning around 250 B.C. until a temporary drought after A.D. 125 was associated with
a pre-Classic collapse at some sites. That collapse was followed by the resumption of
rainy conditions and the buildup of Classic Maya cities, briefly interrupted by another
drought around 600 corresponding to a decline at Tikal and some other sites. Finally,
around A.D. 750 there began the worst drought in the past 7,000 years, peaking around
the year A.D. 800, and suspiciously associated with the Classic collapse.
Thomas M. Smith and Robert Leo Smith analyze the behavior among a population who compete
for a common food resource and the consequences an environment suffers as well as its
population following population growth. This also ties in with the latter excerpts provided above.
Competition occurs when individuals use a common resource that is in short supply
relative to the number seeking it. Competition among individuals of the same species is
referred to as intraspecific competition. As long as the availability of resources does not
impede the ability of individuals to survive, grow and reproduce, no competition exists.
When resources are insufficient to satisfy all individuals, the means by which they are
allocated has a marked influence on the welfare of the population.
To summarize; when a population increases the demand for their common food source increases
as well, however when there is not enough resources to around the survivability of the population
decreases. Since the Maya population had limited resources and were depleting their soil of
nutrients, food productivity began to diminish leaving only a few patches of somewhat rich soil
for farmers to exploit to able to produce enough in order to feed a big population.
Was the fall of the Maya civilization foreseen? Jared Diamond explains in his paper, The
End of the World (As they knew it) how societies don’t just collapse but make horrible decisions
based on ignorance and self-interest.
For example, a non-literate society is not going to preserve oral memories of something
that happened long ago. The Classic Lowland Maya eventually succumbed to drought
about AD 800. There had been previous droughts in the Maya realm, but the Maya could
not draw on that experience because, although they had some writing, it preserved only
the conquests of kings, not droughts. Maya droughts recurred at intervals of 208 years, so
the Maya in AD 800 could not remember the drought of AD 592.
Diamond continues with other examples that might explain the fall of other societies and how
their social behavior could have been one of the many culprits of their disastrous fall. He
mentions that “tragedy of commons” or a clash of interest was one possibility.
That refers to a situation in which many consumers are harvesting a communally owned
resource (such as fish in the ocean, or grass in common pastures), and in which there is
no effective regulation of how much of the resource each consumer can draw off.
Under those circumstances, each consumer can correctly reason: “If I don’t catch that fish
or graze that grass, some other fisherman or herder will anyway, so it makes no sense for
me to be careful about overfishing or over harvesting.” The correct rational behavior is to
harvest before the next consumer can, even though the end result is depletion or
extinction of the resource, and hence harm for society as a whole.
Nasa conducted a study in 2009, with the following research question: “What happened to the
Mayan civilization?”. They begun with the hypothesis that they did it to themselves by
deforesting their landscape. Their were several major droughts about the time the Maya
disappeared. They had to cut trees for firewood and for building materials, which did not leave
that much vegetation. “They had to burn 20 trees to heat the limestone for making just 1 square
meter of the lime plaster they used to build their tremendous temples, reservoirs, and
monuments,” explains Tom Server an archeologist involved in the project. The team
reconstructed how the deforestation could have played a role in worsening the drought. They
modeled the two scenarios: one with 100 percent deforestation in the Maya area and the second
with no deforestation. The results demonstrated that the loss of all the trees caused 3-5 degree
rise in temperature and 20-30 percent in decrease in rainfall. These findings helped the
researchers understand the deforestation problems in some areas while other city states thrived.
This is where researchers believed the Mayans deforested through the slash and burn method.
How it works: “..for every 1 to 3 years you farm a piece of land, you need to let it lay fallow for
15 years to recover. In that time, trees and vegetation can grow back there while you slash and
burn another area to plant in.” (See Figure 3)
Figure 3 depicts the cycle of drought and food production The second argument frequently debated is the possibility of continuous warfare within
city- states and noble families.
Figure 4 depicts Spears, Shields and Halab' (Spearthrower) which demonstrates the
type of weaponry being used.
Warfare has shown devastating effects among many societies and countries and the areas near
them. Societies like the Mayan people also used warfare to destroy their opponents. Christopher
Minster explains the impact left in the Maya civilization simply by analyzing the architecture left
as evidence from the Maya empire.
The Maya penchant for warfare is reflected in their architecture. Many of the major and
minor cities have defensive walls, and in the later Classic period, newly-founded cities
were no longer established near productive land, as they had been previously, but rather
on defensible sites such as hilltops. The structure of the cities changed, with the important
buildings all being inside the walls. Walls could be as high as ten to twelve feet (3.5
meters) and were usually made of stone supported by wooden posts. Sometimes the
construction of walls seemed desperate: in some cases, walls were built right up to
important temples and palaces, and in some cases (notably the Dos Pilas site) important
buildings were taken apart for stone for the walls. Some cities had elaborate defenses: Ek
Balam in the Yucatan had three concentric walls and the remains of a fourth one in the
city center.
Johan Normark states in his book, Lethal encounters: Warfare and Virtual Ideologies in the
Maya Area that Mayan elites held an ideology, an ideology that supported warfare to expand
their territory. To the elite this fact was important in order to exhibit their power to other nobles
residing in neighboring cities.
For example, some earlier models on the origin of states (a macro-entity) in the Maya
area singled out population pressure and warfare as crucial for the emergence of states.
Ball (1977) and Webster (1977) assumed that the elite took control over land and other
crucial resources and legitimized themselves through war. The rest of the population had
to submit to elite with military superiority. Factional competition models that largely
follow in a similar vein focus on conflicts within classes and on alliances between classes. It is
assumed that intra-elite competition limited exploitation and the ruling strata needed to finance
their lifestyle through war with neighbors (Brumfiel 1994:3-10; Clark and Blake 1994:17-21).
Other models have combined factional competition with centralizing tendencies that is seen at
some larger sites. These models emphasize a fluctuation between centralization and
decentralization of political power, often as effects from tensions between kingship and kinship
(Blanton, et al.1996; Iannone 2002; Marcus 1993; McAnany 1995). Here the emphasis is more
on how to resolve internal conflicts through ideology. Ideology in these models tends to focus
less on cosmology.
For many years the Maya Civilization were considered to be a peaceful culture that
seldom waged war. Recent advances in the deciphering of the Mayan language have changed
that belief. It is now known that the different Maya city states were constantly at war with each
other and their neighbors. At one point the Maya were made up of as many as 80 separate citystates each having their own ruler and each vying for economic and political supremacy. They
waged war for resources such as food, clothing, and pottery. However, possibly the most
important resource was the enslavement of their enemies who were often sacrificed, eventually if
not immediately depending on their social status. Lisa Lucero’s novel, Classic Lowland Maya
Political Organization: A Review argues the political instability in the regions led to warfare and
therefore a collapse. Lucero mentions:
In brief, between about A.D 760 and A.D 830, a period of endemic warfare ensued when
rulers from other centers attempted to wrest power from Dos Pilas; e.g., Tamarindito,
resulting in the destruction of several centers.
Lucero argues that some of the best evidence comes from the Tamarindito region. Other research
of warfare destruction has been down at Ek Balam north of Chichen Itza and Coba.
Figure 5 depicts a few of the major Maya cities
One reason why endemic war caused the fall of the civilization was because as the crops began
to grow, so did the amount of land owned. Of course, with no set boundaries, there was always
conflict between whose land belonged to whom. With this issue, neighbors began fighting
against neighbors. Not only did this occur over land ownership but also over resources. Due to
living in the rainforest, the Mayan culture was very bountiful in resources. They had more than
enough resources in water, fruits and vegetables. This then created much tension and war
between tribes. Mayans fought to have better spots in reaching the water resources and fought to
make the most profit. When the competition began to rise, the fighting did as well. Through time
of the empire, war began to increase and with the civilization growing so dramatically, it took a
large toll. The best documented and possibly the most important conflict was the struggle
between Calakmul and Tikal in the fifth and sixth centuries. Along with being close to each
other, these two powerful city-states were each dominant in a few different ways. These ways
include political, military, and economic power. They began warring, with vassal cities like Dos
Pilas and Caracol changing hands as the power of each respective city grew. In 562 A.D.
Calakmul and Caracol defeated the mighty city of Tikal, which fell into a brief decline before
regaining its former glory. Some cities were hit so hard that they never recovered, like Dos Pilas
in A.D. 760 and Aguateca sometime around A.D. 790. This is why it is believed that war was the
fall of the Mayan empire. Between 700 and 900 A.D., most of the important Maya cities in the
south and central regions of the Maya civilization went silent, their cities abandoned.
Ecological destruction and warfare are just two theories that are used to examine the
collapse of the Maya. With many other factors that could have contributed to the Maya collapse,
it is important to incorporate all theories when understanding the fall of this civilization. Due to a
combination of droughts, environmental issues, slash and burn methods, conflict over resources,
inter- city state wars and political unrest, the Maya civilization struggled to maintain power over
their territory. The long standing Maya Empire had come to an end just like other civilizations
had gone before them and others after.
Works Cited
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