Maya collapse cycles.

C lassic Period Maya society (A.D. ∼250–850) is almost as well known for its collapse as for its tremendous accomplishments in hieroglyphic writing, monumental art, and architecture and an extensive, populous network of cities and towns that crossed the terrain of parts of four modern nations (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras). Indeed, interest in the political and demographic collapse of this civilization around the 9th century A.D. is inextricably linked to its earlier majesty, and ancient Maya culture has evoked romantic interest about lost cities in the jungle since the early 19th century explorations of Stephens and Catherwood (1). Even today, avid public and academic interest remains trained on this quintessential case study and the degree to which the lessons of the Maya apply to apocalyptic currents in our own world as we abut against the struggle of political will and environmental impacts and constraints. Recent popular books written by David Webster (2), Jared Diamond (3), Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee (4), and Charles Mann (5) respond to the quest for analogs in Maya history. Scientific research has pushed forward our understanding of the complex processes underlying the Classic era Maya collapse, which is now known to have been the culmination of a range of different factors across a diverse political and biotic landscape. It is no longer possible to evoke a single, simple causal factor, although clearly, anthropogenic environmental impacts and untimely climatological events rank highly among the contingencies that triggered the downfall of the most fragile, populous areas of the Maya area interior. The paper by Turner and Sabloff (6) provides a valuable historical perspective on the long-term investigations of the Classic Period Maya collapse. It rallies diverse data on human impacts to the environment and addresses issues of sustainability that rendered parts of the Maya area particularly vulnerable to a set of severe and frequent droughts of the ninth century A.D. (7). The most rapid and dramatic collapse is witnessed at political capitals and their territories in the southern Maya realm of northern Guatemala, western Belize, the southern interior of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula (and northern Chiapas), and the Copan area of Honduras. The largest cities in these areas were home to populations of 50,000– 120,000, and they were surrounded by networks of secondary towns and villages that were likewise abandoned within a period of 50–100 y, generally, from A.D. 800 to A.D. 900. The agrarian landscape of these regions was entirely different from the forested, scarcely inhabited vast tracts that characterize the area today. In its review of extensive and intensive agrarian modifications of the environmentally heterogenous landscape of the Maya area, the article also contributes to an important and current global literature on the large scale of anthropogenic transformations of the environment that enhanced subsistence sustainability (5, 8). Understanding the environmental and demographic contexts of this precipitous collapse does not fully explain the phenomenon. Turner and Sabloff argue that historical, political decisions and strategies must also be taken into account, for two compelling reasons. First, Maya civilization endured for many centuries before the ninth century collapse; powerful states and densely inhabited political landscapes are known from the fourth century B.C. Earlier dynamic cycles of prosperity and demise (9) were followed within a century or two by demographic recovery or more immediately by the rise of victorious rivals. Deeper Maya history reveals the capacity to overcome earlier challenges of environmental constraints, climatic disasters, and warfare. The difference with the ninth century collapse is the fact that whereas soils and biotic communities recovered within two centuries in the southern Maya core area, the region was not resettled as one might expect if environmental conditions were the prime factor. The Classic Maya collapse was a variable, complex phenomenon that prompted a mosaic of local responses, transitions, and transformations across the lowlands region (10). Abandonment of various towns and cities occurred anywhere from the late 700s until the late 900s in the southern realm, and a few settlements were not abandoned at all (11). The lack of Postclassic resettlement of the southern/central Maya lowlands is not due to the total disappearance of Maya civilization. Even in the Petén, smaller populations lingered at aquatic hubs such as the lakes region to the south of Tikal until long after Spanish arrival (12). The field of Mesoamerican archaeology is still processing recent chronological information that reveals that the great northern polity of Chichen Itza arose by the eighth century A.D. and had its apogee during the ninth and tenth centuries A.D., precisely when the southern metropolises fell (13). The rise of a northern empire coincidental with the fall of the southern Maya heartland attests to the importance of political and economic factors. The inadequacy of a simple environmental model is driven home by the fact that Fig. 1. Reconstruction drawing of the Temple of Kukulkan, Mayapan, the principal pyramid of the largest capital city of the Postclassic Maya world. Postclassic Maya civilization coalesced in northern Yucatan, Mexico after the collapse of Classic era Maya society. Illustration is by Luis Góngora (courtesy of Carlos Peraza Lope, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia Mayapan Project).