Time for a Change

So far we have looked at the more traditional approaches of what could have caused the collapse, hence the use of older papers! To summarise, we have reviewed the following theories:

1. Environmental degradation, including deforestation, causing agricultural failure
2. Overshooting of carrying capacity, leading to a lack of food (tying in with the above point)
3. Disease
4. Poor diet
5. Internal warfare

None of these however, can fully explain what actually happened. Perhaps we should look to more external factors, namely climate change that could have triggered the collapse. Although the drought hypothesis has been around for a while, with its first rejection in 1917, it has more recently gained momentum as the leading explanation. Over the next couple of weeks I will be reviewing papers that provide such evidence of past climate variations of the Classic Maya period, to see if this was the case. In the mean time, I recommend reading The Great Maya Droughts: Water, Life, and Death by Richardson Gill (2001), who interestingly is a banker-turned-archaeologist that put forward this controversial theory around a time where there was no evidence.The BBC also has a great 5-part series called Ancient Apocalypse- The Maya Collapse: 

An additional point is that Gill suggested that there were 3 distinct phases of Classic abandonment (this will come in handy later on):

• Phase I (AD 760-810): initial abandonment of the western lowlands
• Phase II (AD 811-860): abandonment of the southeastern lowlands
• Phase III (AD 861-910): large-scale abandonment of remaining cities in the central lowlands and in the north.

He also suggested that the four large Maya cities collapsed within 50 years apart from each other, around 760, 810, 860 and 910 AD.