When the Spanish conquistadors sailed to Central America in 1517, their goal was to destroy the Mayan civilization. But upon arrival, the colonialists found that most of their work had already been done before them. Impressive limestone cities - a classic feature of one of the most developed societies of antiquity - are already overgrown with jungle.
How the Maya met their end remains one of history's most enduring mysteries. The Maya people survived; they even managed to organize a long-term resistance to the European aggressors. But by the time the Spanish landed, the political and economic power that had erected the famous pyramids in those places and supported a population of two million had already disappeared.
The first foundations of the Maya were laid in the first millennium BC, and the peak of development of civilization reached about 600 AD. e. In the chronology of Mesoamerica, the Maya are located between the first Olmecs and the late Aztecs. Archaeologists have found thousands of ancient Mayan cities, most of which are scattered throughout the southern Mexican Yucatan Peninsula, Belize and Guatemala.
Most likely, even more Mayan ruins are located under a thick layer of rainforest.
After about 200 years of serious archaeological research, we have learned enough about the Mayan civilization to admire it. Their distinctive art and architecture showed that they were a people of fine artisans.
The Maya were also intellectually advanced. They understood mathematics and astronomy well, and used them to align pyramids and temples with planetary precession and solar equinoxes. And they used the only known script in Mesoamerica, a bizarre-looking set of symbols, Mayan hieroglyphs.
The miracles left by the Maya provided them with a mystical halo. But how civilization perished is a real mysticism, in every detail. And we seem to understand why Maya came to an end.
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Let's start with what we know. Around 850 AD. BC, after centuries of prosperity and domination, the Maya began to leave their majestic cities, one by one. In less than 200 years, the greatness of civilization has reached only a fraction of the past. Isolated settlements remained, but the heyday of the Maya is gone forever.
Aside from the tragic proportions of the Mayan decline, despite decades of research, archaeologists still have no idea what caused it. As in the case of the Roman Empire, the culprit of the fall of civilization was clearly not alone. But the rate of death of the Maya has led some scientists to conclude that the cause was a major catastrophe, capable of destroying cities one by one on its way.
There are many theories about what ended the Maya. Among them are old and well-known ones - invasion, civil war, loss of trade routes. But since climate records in Central America were collated in the early 1990s, one theory has become particularly popular: the Mayan civilization was doomed due to severe climate change.
In the centuries immediately before the Mayan collapse - the so-called "classical era" from 250 to 800 AD. e. - civilization was buzzing. The cities flourished, the harvest was rich. Climate records (which are taken primarily from the analysis of cave formations) showed that during this period, relatively heavy rains fell in Maya territory. But the same records show that around 820 AD. e. the area was hit by 95 years of intermittent droughts, some of which lasted for decades.
Since these droughts were first identified, scientists have noticed a striking correlation between their timing and the Mayan collapse. While correlation alone is not enough to close the question, the close link between droughts and falls has led experts to believe that the 9th century climate shift may have somehow caused the Mayan decline.
However attractive the drought explanation is, it is not enough. Because not all Mayan cities fell with the drying up of the climate.
The Mayan cities, which fell during the droughts of the 9th century, were mainly located in the southern part of their territory, in the place of modern Guatemala and Belize. In the Yucatan Peninsula to the north, however, the Mayan civilization not only survived these droughts, but flourished. This northern renaissance puts a spoke in the wheels of drought theory: if the south was paralyzed by climate shift, what happened to the north?
Various explanations for this north-south divergence have been proposed, but so far no theory has won out. However, a recent discovery may shed light on this enduring paradox.
Mayan archaeologists have a hard time extracting data. Almost no written records of the Maya, of which there were once thousands, survived colonial times (by order of Catholic priests, the Spaniards burned Mayan books in heaps - only four of the remaining are known). Instead, scientists rely on calendrical records on stone monuments, stylistic analysis of Mayan pottery, and radiocarbon dating of organic materials to determine the flourishing times of the ancient Maya.
Previous research has already determined the approximate ages of the major urban centers in the north of the Mayan civilization; it turned out that the north survived the droughts of the 9th century. However, until recently, this data sample was never collected in one study. And it is important to do this, because you can look at the northern Maya as a whole and, based on this, determine the general trends of ups and downs.
In a study published in December, archaeologists from the United States and the United Kingdom brought together for the first time all the calculated ages of urban centers in the northern Maya lands. 200 dates were collected from locations throughout the Yucatan Peninsula, half from stone calendar records and half from radiocarbon dating. Then the scientists managed to create a broad picture of the times when the northern Mayan cities were active, as well as times when each of them could sink into oblivion.
What scientists have found significantly changes our understanding of when and, perhaps, why the Mayan civilization came to an end. Contrary to previous belief, the north fell into disrepair during a drought - in fact, it suffered two of them.
Stone chronicles showed that in the second half of the 9th century there was a 70% decline in the activity of Mayan cities. This rate of decline was echoed in radiocarbon dating for the northern Maya region, with wood construction declining in the same period. Importantly, at the same time, drought destroyed the Mayan civilization in the south - and for the north it did not go unnoticed.
Scientists believe that the extinction of creative activity is evidence of the political and social collapse that took place in the north. The north definitely fared better than the south in the 9th century, but recent evidence suggests that the region has experienced significant extinction anyway. Previously, it could not be detected due to the subtle nature of the event: a decline in production, even large-scale, is difficult to detect without a comprehensive, region-wide analysis conducted by new research.
The decline of the north in the 9th century is an interesting detail of Mayan history, but nothing fundamental about it - after all, we already knew that the northern Maya survived the droughts of the 9th century (Chichen Itza and other centers flourished in the 10th century).
Yet scholars have identified a second decline that changed our understanding of Mayan history. After a brief recovery during the 10th century (which, remarkably, coincides with an increase in rainfall), scientists noticed another sharp decline in production in numerous places in the northern Maya territory: stone carving and other building activity fell by almost half from 1000 to 1075 g. n. e. Moreover, as in the crisis 200 years ago, scientists have found that the decline of the 11th century Maya took place against the backdrop of a severe drought.
And not just droughts. The droughts of the 9th century were certainly serious. But the 11th century brought the region the worst drought in 2000 years - a "mega-drought".
After a short recovery, there was a decline in production in the north - amid drought. Climate records show that precipitation declined for most of the century, from 1020 to 1100, just around the same time the northern Maya collapsed. Correlation alone means little. But two led even skeptics to believe this causality.
The 11th century mega-drought has previously been cited as the cause of the fall of the northern Maya, but old dating methods did not clearly determine whether the two events intersected. A detailed analysis published in December allowed us to state with some confidence that climate change caused not one, but two periods of Mayan decline.
The first wave of droughts ended the Maya in the south, and the second seems to have sentenced them in the north.
After the second wave of droughts, the Mayans did not recover. Chichen Itza and most of the important centers in the north never flourished again. There are a few retreats - like the northern Mayapan city, which flourished in the 13th and 15th centuries - but they don't match the size and complexity of the classic Mayan cities. In many ways, the 11th century was the last breath of the Maya.
Climate change appears to have played an important role in the downfall of the Maya. But why?
Much of the archaeological explanation for the collapse involves agriculture. The Maya, like all major civilizations, were heavily dependent on the harvest for their economic success - and, of course, for maintaining their vast workforce. The simplest explanation for the decline of the Maya would be the annual decline in the harvest caused by droughts, which gradually reduced the political influence of the Maya and ultimately led to complete social disintegration.
But even proponents of the drought hypothesis admit that the picture should be much more detailed.
“We know that the Mayan territory was growing military and sociopolitical instability due to droughts in the 9th century,” says Julie Hoggart of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, who participated in the December climate analysis.
Long distance conflict is also a good way to destroy civilization; perhaps the Maya simply killed each other. Perhaps all this took place against the backdrop of severe droughts. As food supplies dwindled during the arid decades, the struggle for resources became more intense and eventually led to a tipping point where the ancient Maya civilization was irreparably fragmented.
There is also at least one explanation that does not require any military action. Perhaps the Maya were doomed not by warriors, but by talents. Because the Maya were excellent artisans and environmental sculptors.
To grow enough food and feed their millions, the Maya dug a huge system of canals, sometimes hundreds of kilometers wide, that allowed them to drain and raise the swampy badlands that were abundant in Maya territory, making them arable land. Some archaeologists have called them "floating gardens." The Maya also cleared vast tracts of forest for both agriculture and their cities.
Some scientists believe that good environmental management could have caused further Mayan collapse, for example, due to the deterioration of the natural climate. Some scholars believe that deforestation for land clearing and for agriculture may have led to localized drought effects that were exacerbated during a widespread drought.
An indirect consequence of their agricultural misfortune may be that they have allowed their populations to grow too large, and that large populations are vulnerable to prolonged declines in food supplies.
Whatever the reason - or reasons - for the fall of the Maya, we know a thing or two about the fate of the people who were left with the consequences of it all. Since 1050 A. D. e. Maya took to the road. They left the inland lands on which their ancestors flourished, and headed towards the Caribbean coast or other sources of water, to lakes and rivers.
The Mayan exodus may have been motivated by hunger. If crops did die out after the droughts of the 9th and 11th centuries, moving to water-rich areas made sense as they gained access to seafood and fertile land by the sea. Whatever the reason, the Maya wandered into the moisture.
But again, this has always been the case. One of the duties of the Mayan rulers was to communicate with the gods, who ensured a wet year and good harvests. In places around the Maya world, archaeologists have lifted the bones of people from the bottom of lakes and sinkholes - which were considered doors to the underworld: this eloquently proves that people were sacrificed to mercy the gods. When the rains were good and civilization flourished, it was clear that the Mayan prayers were answered.
But the gods turned away from the Maya.
Ilya Khel