What caused the collapse of Maya civilization?
This image of the palace ruins at the Maya city of Palenque offers a sense of the achievements of Maya civilization,
which flourished in Central America from the early centuries CE until about 900. Located in present-day Mexico,
Palenque was a center of culture during the late Classic Period when remarkable advancements in Maya
architecture, art, writing, agriculture, mathematics, and astronomy were made. Much of the palace's construction
occurred under Palenque's renowned ruler Pacal II the Great, who reigned from 615 to 683. With its complex of
rooms, courtyards, and corridors as well as its limestone and stucco carvings, impressive four-story tower, and
vaulted tunnel to carry running water into the grounds, the palace reflects the greatness of classic Maya civilization.
Like other Maya centers, Palenque was abandoned after 800 for reasons that are not fully understood.
Scholars have put forth a variety of possible explanations for the decline of Maya civilization. Given the complexity
of the problem and its numerous potential factors, it is likely that Mayanists and other scholars will continue for
some time to debate the question: What caused the collapse of Maya civilization?
MLA Citation
"Maya Collapse: Key Question." World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 22 Oct. 2014.
Dilemma: Perspective 1
An Alternative View on the Maya Collapse
Popular views of the Classic Maya collapse (900–1000 CE) present a tableau of an environment destroyed by
unchecked population growth, overuse of the landscape, and too many demands on the populace. This view
derives from our own disastrous relationship with our environment and our perception of the tropics as inhospitable.
How could the Maya civilization arise in this setting? The enduring fact is that it did.
The Maya collapse refers pointedly to a 100-year period of change in Maya cities of the southern lowlands. Four to
five Maya generations long, no one person experienced the whole transition. Shifting dynamics of the waning
hierarchy would have been complex. The neglect of the civic infrastructure of the Maya is reminiscent of the
abandonment of downtown Detroit today, ghost towns of the railroad cities of yesterday, and the changes that time
creates on any landscape. The abandonment of one area gives rise to another, like the Roman Empire and, yes,
the Maya civilization.
The Maya agrarian foundation emerged and thrived for two millennia. Early centers, founded circa 800 BCE,
expanded and developed until 900 CE. By the Classic Period (250–900 CE), stone monuments recorded important
events—power plays, alliances, regal visits, and celebratory proceedings. Classic centers were imposing,
characterized by enormous temples, large plazas, and grand palaces surrounded by a farming countryside.
The Maya hierarchy sponsored scholars who maintained astronomical reckonings, established sophisticated
mathematics, and passed down written texts. The Maya documented events on stone, decorated pottery, and bark
books. These sources prevail in the record from the earliest times through the Spanish conquest. Indeed, the
Spanish records, along with the indigenous Yucatecan Maya speakers numbering one million today, provide
threads that link the contemporary Maya to their glorious past.
Throughout the Maya developments and transformations, farmers fueled the system. Agriculture sustained the
remarkable growth of the Classic Period and survived the civic upheaval of the collapse. The Maya practiced a
traditional form of land use built on time-honored relationships to their environment that was so ingrained that the
colonial Spanish legislated against it. These strategies, known as Maya forest gardening and reported in Ford and
Emery, endure today among the Maya. Given this resilience, it is difficult to imagine that the farming strategies were
the source of environmental destruction.
What caused the Classic Maya collapse? No single cause covers all, as Jared Diamond's book demonstrates.
Rather, a constellation of factors account for the collapse: warfare, overpopulation, disruption of trade, isolation of
the elite, and climate change. D. L. Webster's The Fall of the Ancient Maya offers a comprehensive synthesis of the
complexities. Yet he accepts without question that the Maya destroyed their environment. We can see today's large
populations and unsustainable Western land use practices lead quickly to environmental devastation. Certainly this
must explain the ancient Maya case. Or does it?
The evidence for environmental destruction is derived from paleoclimatic reconstructions of lake core
sediments. These data provide critical insights into the nature of environment but require caution when interpreted.
Influential studies assumed that the Maya were the principal agents of environmental change. Yet it is well known
that the Americas were occupied more than 10,000 years ago, before the rise of the Maya. Further, direct data on
pollen at the time of sediment deposition represent only wind-borne species. These plants provide only part of the
picture. Nearly all the useful plants of the tropics are pollinated by insects and other animals. Important trees in
Maya life—avocado, mahogany, allspice, cacao—do not appear in these pollen records. Finally, the timing of the
environmental events that are linked to destruction occurs before and persists during the growth of Maya civilization
and could not be related to the collapse. Taken together, the thesis of wholesale destruction of the Maya forest is
untenable.
If the destruction of the landscape is not viable, what is? There is no question that the Classic Maya abandoned
their civic infrastructure by 1000 CE. This poignantly marks the failure of the political and economic systems of the
hierarchy.There is increasing evidence of instability; strife among the elite is recorded on monuments at the time
when building projects are most elaborate. The size and extent of major centers, covering 50–150 hectares of civic
building, were attained in the Late Classic Period (600–900 CE) just before the collapse. In addition, population
during the Late Classic Period reached its height. Combining these factors was a recipe for disaster.
Success of the Maya system depended on predictability. The production and distribution of resources was linked to
the annual seasons. All sources reveal that the Maya were operating at maximum where subtle perturbations would
cause destabilization. G.H. Haug and others have proposed climate change as a source of the abandonment of
Maya centers.Using precipitation data from the Caribbean and drawing connections in regional weather systems,
these scholars show that a series of droughts coincided with the Classic Maya collapse. Successive droughts would
impact farming and ultimately explain the progressive neglect of the civic infrastructure of the Classic Maya.
After the collapse, there was a shift in occupation. Postclassic centers are known across the Yucatán, some 300–
400 kilometers (about 186–249 miles) to the north. Abandoned were the enormous civic undertakings that typified
the Maya civilization.Yet the Maya persisted. The northern civic centers of the Postclassic were modest in size, but
with all the familiar icons that shaped the Classic Period. A multitude of small centers competed with each other. At
the time of the Spanish conquest, such well-known centers as Tulum, Cozumel, and Isla Mujeres on the Caribbean
coast were thriving trading communities. The system the Spanish encountered and documented in ethnohistoric
records attests to the survival of the Maya writing and calendric systems, as well as an indigenous hierarchy that
bridged the time of the Spanish conquest. The Maya live on today, their language and way of life still linked to their
landscape.
Works Cited
Ford, Anabel and Kitty Emery. "Legacy of the Maya Forest." Journal of Ethnobiology 28 (2008); Diamond,
Jared.Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: The Penguin Group, 2005; Haug, G. H., D.
Gunther, L. C. Peterson, D. M. Sigman, K. A. Hughen, and B. Aeschlimann. "Climate and the Collapse of Maya
Civilization."Science 299 (2003):1731–1735; Webster, D. L. The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of
the Maya Collapse. London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002.
Dilemma: Perspective 2
Recent Insights on the Classic Maya Collapse
Since Spanish conquistadors pondered on the existence of Maya ruins in the 1500s, there has been speculation on
why the inhabitants abandoned their large and beautiful cities. Indeed the downfall of ancient Maya civilization in
northern Guatemala, southeastern Mexico, southern Yucatan, and parts of Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador has
attracted the attention of historians, archaeologists, teachers, and filmmakers over a long time. Despite this
attention, researchers do not agree on the causes of the Maya collapse. Many theories attempt to explain why
Maya civilization collapsed, which include disease, war, drought, and economic turmoil. Ancient Maya cities had
impressive stone architecture, hieroglyphic writing and art, populations in the thousands, extensive agricultural
fields, canals and reservoirs, interregional trade, social classes, and state level government. The fact that they had
advanced technology and civilization makes the Maya collapse more intriguing. Recent archaeological and
environmental evidence provides significant insights towards the Maya downfall. While there were cycles of growth
and decline in Maya civilization over millennia, it is the Classic Period collapse from approximately 700–900 CE that
is investigated the most. The Classic Period collapse involved the halting of the construction of temples and stone
sculptures, the abandonment of cities and regions, and possibly ecological change.
Before visiting the collapse and its causes, we must examine important issues regarding Maya society. For one, the
Maya did not disappear following the collapse. Today, millions of Maya live in Mexico and Central America.
Archaeologists also know more about the decline of elite culture and cities than they do about the commoners in the
countryside. Importantly, the collapse was not a single event experienced in each region; it involved various causes
and effects region by region and at different times. For instance, some areas were affected less and their
populations continued until the Spanish conquest. Other areas experienced collapse earlier and they were never
repopulated. Additionally, the collapse of Classic Maya civilization did not take place over a short period—it took
centuries for many cities to become abandoned. Research also concentrates in the lowlands of Yucatan and Peten,
Guatemala, thus, we know less about the Maya collapse on the coasts and the highlands. Finally, many factors
regarding the collapse are not supported by data, especially earthquakes, hurricanes, disease, and foreign invasion.
Natural disasters do not affect entire regions over a long period. Evidence for disease does not appear in skeletons
and burial patterns, and there are no known New World epidemic diseases. The discussion of the Classic Maya
collapse, therefore, must include a regional perspective involving several possible causes occurring over a long
period.
Contemporary research considers environmental destruction, drought, social and political change, warfare, and
economic transformations as variables in the Maya downfall. Environmental destruction involves overpopulation and
the devastation of a comparatively fragile ecology by over cropping. Environmental change has been used as an
explanation of the collapse occurring over a large region. Thin soils predominate and nutrients are held in the
vegetation and not in the ground. The Maya relied on maize, which requires large fields, abundant nutrients, and
water. To grow plants, the Maya cut and burnt the vegetation in the dry season to return the nutrients to the ground.
Then they planted corn fields during the rainy season. Populations in Maya cities reached their peak in the Classic
Period, therefore, extensive forest clearing for agriculture was necessary. Forest exposure could have changed
rainfall patterns, which led to drier conditions and destruction of the thin soil making agriculture difficult. In the case
of Copán, Honduras, people resorted to farming on hill slopes where soils were thinner and more susceptible to
erosion. Evidence of environmental problems comes from erosion seen in excavations and sediment deposits in
lakes, the increase of pollen from plants that did not grow in forests, and declining human health from nutritional
stresses. Similarly, droughts have been blamed for the Maya collapse. Sediment and pollen evidence has been
utilized to reconstruct an extensive dry spell and subsequent food stresses, which may have led to social unrest and
the abandonment of cities. However, environmental problems may not have factored into the collapse of every
region, especially rural areas. The Maya fields also had trees and terracing, which could have curtailed erosion in
some areas. Maya dietary stresses also occurred before the collapse period.
Social and political changes may have been crucial in the collapse of Maya states. Archaeologists point out that the
Maya downfall could have been caused by political competition or a "nobles' revolt" in specific regions. Increasing
populations and decreasing amounts of agricultural land may have led to competition between elites for access to
labor and food. While resources declined, the numbers of elites increased since their families were larger and they
had better diets. The hieroglyphic texts and burning in elite houses point to increased noble rivalry. It is also
possible that Maya elites who were not successful in politics, economics, ritual, or conflicts lost supporting
populations. Maya agriculturalists and craft persons may have moved to regions where elite governments were
successful. Cities in the southern lowlands, for example, were deserted while zones in northern Yucatan flourished.
Additionally, investigators have suggested that Maya elite successes ebbed and flowed according to native religious
and political structures based on the Maya calendar. For example, Maya states, such as Tikal, Guatemala, acquired
and then relinquished power according to calendar cycles. Elites negotiated seats of political power, which rotated
site to site in predetermined periods, thus explaining the downfall of some cities and the rise of others. Investigators
have countered that calendars and associated Maya ritual were not always the same across time and space and
there is no evidence that Maya governments changed according to elite negotiated agreements.
Warfare is a compelling variable in the decline of some Maya cities. Classic Maya art and hieroglyphic texts
demonstrate the importance of warfare. Elites carry spears and shields and they capture other nobles. Texts
mention battles and captive taking. Furthermore, archaeologists discovered Classic Maya settlements with
fortifications, such as ditches and walls, attesting to military threats. Dos Pilas, Guatemala, for instance, has
references to war in its inscriptions and temples were protected by defensive walls during the collapse. Warfare and
competition for resources always existed throughout Maya civilization, therefore, the changes in Maya conflict in the
Classic Period have to be explained. Maya war may have become more destructive and frequent as elites fought
over dwindling resources. Conflict may also have resulted from shifting trade routes. Importantly, there is no
evidence of invading foreign armies.
In conclusion, the Classic Maya collapse was a complex event involving multiple factors affecting different regions
at different times. There is no single explanation of the Maya downfall, such as disease, war, or drought. Several
factors, including overpopulation, ecological change, social transformations, and conflict between elites, affected
Maya states and populations. Maya people weathered these drastic changes in their civilization, however, through
religious, economic, social, and political reforms in the Postclassic Period.
Palka, Joel. "Maya Collapse: Recent Insights on the Classic Maya Collapse." World History: Ancient and Medieval
Eras.ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 22 Oct. 2014.