Study Questions – Egeo209 Quiz 2
Previous Materials
Be sure to review the definition of Geography and the 5 themes of Human Geography as
well as the 5 steps of the scientific approach.
Maya Civilization
Maps (use maps provided in lecture)
 Be able to identify the spatial location of the Maya Civilization based on the maps
used in class.
 What are the three physical regions within which the Maya lived? Where are they
and what is the difference in regards to when collapse occurred by region?
 Is there any part of the general Maya region where no cities existed? Where is it?
Video and Web Pages
 When did the Maya Civilization start and when did the Classical Period end with
collapse?
 How did the king and elite demonstrate and maintain their control?
 What did the video suggest as the cause for the collapse?
 Were the Maya a single group of people or multiple ethnic groups?
 Besides developing a very precise calendar what were some of the other major
achievements of the Maya?
 Why were the Maya so willing to accept Christianity?
Haug et al. and the Drought Hypothesis of collapse (consult both the PowerPoint
slides and the readings)
 When were the great droughts that Haug thinks had a direct effect on the collapse
of the Maya?
 How did Haug determine when these droughts occurred? That is what did he
measure and how did that indicate a drought?
 Where did Haug take his measurements? Was it in a particular ancient Mayan
city or somewhere else? How was Haug certain that his measurements
represented the climatic conditions throughout the Mayan region?
 Why did Haug refer to the Mayan Region as a periodic desert? What was the role
of the ITCZ in the climate in the Mayan Region?
 Why did Haug measure titanium levels? What was its relationship to the
droughts?
 By looking at Figure 2 in Haug’s article, can you find any other times when
droughts occurred? Were there any droughts in more recent times? If there were
droughts in recent times might this help us to understand the stresses that the
Maya might have faced in the 9th century?


By comparing a timeline of major Maya events (including specific collapse of
cities) and Haug’s droughts do we find any relationship or correlation? If we add
a map of physical regions and Maya cities can we find any geographic pattern to
the collapse?
What are “stele” (singular is stela) and why are they important in understanding
when collapse occurred in a city?
Martin & Grube, and Stephan Houston and the Internal Warfare Hypothesis of
Collapse (consult the readings and maps from PowerPoint slides)
 What were the 3 cities cited as evidence of a “world war” in the Mayan Region?
Be able to find these three places on a map. In which physical region are these
three cities located? In what modern day countries are they located?
 How do we know about this warfare? What recent event provided more
information?
 Which city was the surrogate city? What does surrogate city mean in the context
of this warfare?
 When was this warfare occurring (what years are mentioned)? Was this warfare
before, during or after three droughts that Haug identified?
 Was control of trade and trade routes at all important in this warfare?
 When did Dos Pilas finally collapse? Is this before, during or after the three
droughts?
 In the article by Stefan Lovgren, he provides considerable information from
Stephen Houston about the city of Piedras Negras. What reason does Houston
give for the collapse of Piedras Negras? Does drought play a role in the collapse
of Piedras Negras?
Webster and “Explaining the Collapse” (consult both the PowerPoint slides and the
reading)
 Webster offers a list of 10 different possible explanations for the collapse. Does
Webster limit explanations to those that we have found elsewhere in the world?
Explain.
 What are the two major categories into which he organizes the 10 explanations he
deals with? Under the first major category we considered a number of these
explanations, what are these? Under the second major category we concentrated
on only the Ecological subcategory of causes; we considered in detail two of these
what are they?
 Why might a peasant revolt have caused the collapse? Why were peasants so
important? Why might peasants want to revolt? What problems does Webster
find with the peasant revolt hypothesis for explaining the collapse?
 Why might the collapse of a trade network have resulted in collapse of Maya?
What important things might they have traded? Might this suggest that if our
current international trade network in oil were to collapse our civilization might
collapse? Does Webster seem to think that collapse of trade networks led to the
collapse of the Maya?
 Agricultural degradation: what is slash and burn – shifting cultivation? How does
it work? Why is it necessary in tropical areas like the Maya region? What is the



fallow period and why would it decline? How did the invention of agriculture
allow for the creation of urban areas like Maya cities? If Maya kings wanted their
cities to grow what impact did this have on agriculture and therefore their entire
system?
Since the abandonment of Mayan cities like Tikal has the soil somewhat
recovered? According to Olsen has it fully recovered? In a slash and burn—
shifting cultivation system in the Mayan Region, for how long could a farmer
plant a field before moving on? How long would he have to wait before returning
to a field? How much might his output decline over a period of say 4 years?
Might agricultural degradation lead to a peasant revolt?
Since Maya were Native Americans is it possible that they could destroy their
own environment?
Five Fundamental Themes of Human Geography
For each of the five theme how can these be applied to our study of the Maya?
o Location – where are they?
o Place – how can you describe the place?
o Humans and Evironment – what can you explain about this?
o Movement – did any movements occur?
o Region – What is the Maya Region?