Experts on the decline and demise of the ancient Mayan Empire[1] have suggested many different causes – earthquakes; extremely dramatic climate change; recurrent epidemics of malaria and yellow fever; foreign conquests and civil wars. After a period of forced production in architecture and sculpture, the ancient Maya's intellectual and aesthetic abilities dried up, followed by a corresponding social decay, political decline, and government disintegration; and finally, the economic collapse caused by the failure of the ancient Maya agricultural system to meet the needs of a growing population. Let's take a closer look at each claim and then choose which one to trust between them.
The first cause of seismic activity seems to be the most unlikely. This claim is based on two main factors: (1) the current state of destruction of ancient imperial cities, collapsed temples and palaces, and overturned, shattered monuments; and (2) severe earthquakes in the Guatemalan highlands, immediately south of Petten. However, the following objections to this statement may be raised:
Although severe earthquakes often occur in Guatemala and the Chiapas Highlands, the Peten lowlands are far from the main seismic belt of the highlands where strong earthquakes occur, and the Peten soil humus has a loose character at 1 yard [2] deep and therefore does not experience strong earthquakes in the highlands; when an earthquake is felt, the earthquake there is much weaker than in the highlands. Similarly, of all the destruction scenes seen in the cities of the ancient empire, the collapsed temples, palaces, and monuments can be easily explained as the result of fast-growing plants, which grew unstoppable and eventually flattened all obstacles. Finally, neither the Old World nor the New World has had a single region widely and permanently abandoned due to seismic activity. It is true that there are a few cities that have been permanently abandoned due to earthquakes and the ensuing volcanic activity, such as Pompeii and Herculaneum, but there has never been a precedent for an entire region to be abandoned. Since the lush vegetation we are currently seeing is enough to cause the destruction of buildings and the overturning of monuments, the earthquake hypothesis should be ruled out.
Climate change led to the destruction and abandonment of ancient imperial cities. This view is based on the assumption that due to the overall climate belt in the Western Hemisphere moving southward, the Annual Rainfall in the Petten Lowlands during the Paleocene period was much lower than it is now. Based on this hypothesis, it is further inferred that lower rainfall in Petten would lead to better local living conditions, including reduced disease and overly lush vegetation, and land with less vegetation was relatively easier for Mayan farmers to adapt. Later, at the end of the Paleocene, the overall climate zone may have changed again, this time moving in the opposite direction (north), increasing rainfall in the Petten lowlands. The dry season became so short that the shrubs could not be burned efficiently and the ancient Maya had to abandon agriculture. As the climate deteriorated, disease became more common, until finally the ancient Mayans were forced to abandon the region altogether and find a new home elsewhere.
This hypothesis is based on data derived from evidence of past rainfall in central and northern California, which was determined by the different widths of the great redwood tree wheels in northern California. While these treewheels undoubtedly provide an accurate record of long-term rainfall in northern California, it is highly doubtful whether changes in rainfall in California indicate that rainfall in the southern Part of the Yucatan Peninsula, 2,500 miles southeast of California, has also changed accordingly. Not to mention the other paradoxes involved in this explanation: Climate change in one region does have the potential to have a significant impact on the climate of another, but the 2,500-mile distance is simply too far away. This hypothesis can also be rejected.
The hypothesis of malaria and yellow fever: the repeated epidemics of these two diseases plunged the ancient empire into debilitation, leading to a massive death of the population, so the ancient Maya had to abandon those cities in the Peten lowlands where the disease was prevalent and seek a healthier environment elsewhere. However, this explanation was ruled out at the outset. The reason is simple: malaria and yellow fever were not endemic until whites came to the Americas. Malaria is well known to be a disease of the Old World, a swamp fever associated with the Pontine swamps of Roman times. Despite the objections of some pundits, it is almost certain that yellow fever originated in West Africa. The earliest description of yellow fever in the New World was the epidemic of Yucatan in 1648 AD, which was accurate enough to make a diagnosis from the description of the disease. This occurred long after the first black slaves were introduced from the west coast of Africa to northern Yucatan. When they came from Africa, these people may have brought the yellow fever virus with them.
With regard to the claim that foreign conquests and civil wars may have led to the decline of the ancient Mayan Empire and the subsequent abandonment of prosperous areas, it should be noted that no archaeological evidence of such hypothetical conquests and wars has been found. The sculptures of the ancient empire clearly lack the relevant representations of war scenes, battles, conflicts and violence. It is true that captives who were bound were occasionally portrayed, but the groups to which they belonged were susceptible to religious or even astronomical interpretations, and the war itself was almost certainly irrelevant. Nor do the architecture and pottery of the ancient empire show a widespread introduction of foreign, non-Mayan art forms, so it seems possible to rule out the possibility of abandonment due to foreign conquest. Civil wars could sweep through ancient empires from time to time, and city-state alliances competed with each other, which was not impossible. As we shall see in the next chapter, the city-states of the New Empire were more than once embroiled in similar infighting. But to say that this civil war eventually led to the complete abandonment of the ancient empire would be unbelievable.
Again, it has been argued that with the end of the Great Period, the glitzy tendencies in Maya art, namely extravagance and over-design, became more and more apparent, suggesting that the material, moral, and political decadence of the late Mayan Empire was enough to lead to the collapse and abandonment of cities. Even acknowledging that this decadence became a major feature of Mayan art in the great period does not necessarily mean that it was caused by the exhaustion of intellect and aesthetics. The decline of art is only a more general representation of decadence, involving all stages of maya civilization, which was a common feature of the ancient imperial era.
In summing up this problem, it seems necessary to look for a more direct, coercive material cause to explain the eventual collapse of the ancient empire in the 10th century AD. In fact, it seems certain that the main forces that led to the demise of the ancient empire and the withdrawal from the southern lowlands were far more coercive than any of the reasons mentioned above—the Maya agricultural system was completely unable to meet the food needs of the population growth at that time.
If the Mayan agricultural system were implemented uninterruptedly in any one region for a long time, it would eventually not be able to produce enough agricultural products to feed the resident population. In the hundreds of years BC, when the Mayan civilization first developed in the lowlands north of Petten, the area was a densely forested land. The once-growing forests were constantly cleaned up and burned in order to obtain corn fields, gradually turning the original forests into artificial grasslands. When this process was complete, the primary forest was heavily cut down and replaced by these man-made grasslands, and the agriculture of the ancient Maya came to an end, as they could not make tools to turn the soil and did not have enough hoes, pickaxes, rakes, shovels, shovels or plows.
The agricultural collapse hypothesis was first proposed by plant biologists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but it has not been proven, but I believe it explains the observed archaeological facts better than any other hypothesis. It best explains why monuments with monumental significance in different ancient imperial centers have gradually stopped being erected. As we have seen, these events did not occur suddenly, but were scattered over a period of about a hundred years. The replacement of primary forests with artificial savannahs must be gradual, reaching a stage of reaching a limit in different cities and ultimately causing the abandonment of cities at different times, as it determines the associated variables such as population size, settlement time and overall fertility in the surrounding area.
It is widely believed that the complete abandonment of cities and the relocation of cities are the only solution to desperate economic dilemmas; in this case, the time at which cities are finally abandoned varies, as we have seen, about a hundred years after the earliest and latest cities. This explanation is more consistent with known archaeological facts than any other hypothesis.
Other headwinds that arose after the reduction of food supplies, such as the ensuing social unrest, government chaos, and even contempt for religious beliefs, undoubtedly had an impact on the collapse of the ancient empire. But economic failure— the law of diminishing returns, the high cost of living— was probably the main reason for the eventual disintegration of the mayan empire.
Notes
[1] We know that the Maya were conquered by the Spaniards (during the New Empire), and the Maya civilization gradually disappeared thereafter, which is not much different from the decline and fall of other Latin American civilizations such as the Aztec civilization and the Incas; the maya civilization that suddenly disappeared in the ordinary people's impression mostly refers to the Maya civilization in the ancient empire period, and the decline of the Maya civilization during the ancient empire also adopted a reference for the decline of the entire Maya civilization. - Editor's Note
[2] 1 yard ≈ 0.9144m.