Collapse of the Mayans
Rediscovery
Mayan civilization was poorly known until rediscovered in
1839 by John Stevens, an American Lawyer and Frederick Catherwood, an English
draftsman. Stevens
heard rumors of cities in the jungle and got President Van Buren to appoint him
as Ambassador to the Confederation of Central American Republics so he could
pursue his archeological investigations.
-
they explored 44 different cities
-
realized that they had found the remains of an advanced
civilization
First Contact
First contact between Mayans and Europeans came in 1502 when
Columbus
captured a Mayan trading canoe on his 4th (last) voyage. In 1527 Spanish began to conquer the Mayans but they didn’t
finish their conquest until 1697. Thus,
they had a long time to observe existing Mayan culture.
Bishop
Diego de Landa lived in the Yucatan
from 1549-1578- complex dude (with
an interesting place in history). He burned all Mayan writings that he could find because he wanted to eliminate “paganism". However, he wrote detailed accounts of Mayan society and
obtained info that later helped to decifer Mayan writing. Thus, much of what we know is from de Landa.
Brief Mayan History
Mayans part
of Mesoamerican region. Mesamerican civilizations lacked metal tools, pullies and other machines, wheels (except on toys), boats with sails, and large domesticated animals to plow or
carry loads. Basic ingredients of Mayan culture aquired from elsewhere in
Mesoamerica. Mayan agriculture and writing came from the Olmecs
and Zapotecs.
Other
ingredients are unique to Mayans. First evidence of Mayan villages and pottery appeared around
1000 BC, substantial buildings around 500 BC, and writing 400 BC. Mayan
writing deals exclusively with kings, nobles and conquests- nothing about commoners. They wrote books on bark paper coated
with plaster. The Spanish Bishop Landa burned most of these codices, so only 4
remain
The Mayan Calendar begins on
Aug 11, 3114 BC.
The Classic Period of the Mayans began about
250 AD when evidence
of kings and dynasties appear. The King functioned as High Priest whose supernatural powers came
from his family's relationships with the gods. The King was responsible
for astronomical and calendar rituals and responsible
for bringing rain and prosperity. Thus,
interesting relationship between King and peasants; peasants supported the King's luxurious life style because
the King promised to make conditions good for the peasants. This could cause problems when droughts came and the
King broke his promise to the people. The Mayans constructed
palaces to glorify kings. These palaces were built
exclusively using human labor.
a Mayan civilization reached a peak around 8th
century AD, but underwent a decline in the 9th
century AD. Different Mayan Cities collapsed at different times. By the time of he arrival of the Spanish the southern lowlands had lost 99% of
their population. Cortez and his soldiers nearly starved because there were
so few villages from which to acquire food. Mayan populations further declined after Spanish invasion due to diseases
and other causes
Mayan communities still exist in the Yucatan today where people
think of themselves as Mayan rather than Mexican. Some
villages still speak Mayan.
Let’s consider the physical environment experienced by
the Mayans
Mayans lived in what was known as seasonal tropical forest with a rainy from
May to October
and a dry season
from January to April. Thus, this environment could
be considered a “seasonal tropical desert”. Rainfall was very variable between years, varying by factor of three or four. IN addition, the timing of rainfall was unpredictable. Thus,
farmers trying to grow corn probably experienced frequent crop failures caused by droughts and hurricanes
Mayans in the north of the Yucatan Peninsula Northern Mayans reached water in "cenotes". In
the south the water table was too deep to reach via wells or cenotes. Southern Mayans built “reservoirs” to capture water. Tikal reservoirs could
hold enough water to meet the needs of 10,000 people for 18 months.
Mayan agriculture based on corn (70% of diet) and beans, domesticated
dogs, turkeys, Muskovy ducks, bees for honey, and wild meat
from deer and fish. Meat was rare in diet and mostly reserved for the elite. Archeologists learned about diets from isotopic analyses of skeletons and looking at the numbers of animal bones associated
with the sites.
Not too much is known about Mayan Agriculture. May have been slash and burn- forests cleared and burned, farmed until soil exhausted, and then abandoned for 15 – 20 years. Because
much land is abandoned in this system, there is a limit to how much food can be
produced so should be able to support modest population sizes. However,
estimates of population density are surprisingly high ( 250 – 750 people per square mile, even up to 1500 per square mile). As a comparison, the most densely populated African countries Rwanda and Burundi have 750 &
540 people per square mile. Thus, the Mayans must have had ways to improve agricultural production such as terraced
slopes and irrigation systems. Corn has
little protein and the humid climate make it hard to store for long periods of
time. Because they lacked domesticated animals for plowing and
transporting food, all transport was done by human porters.
How did the physical environment affect Mayan civilization?
Agricultural improvements allow the development of socially
stratified societies in which farmers
must be able to produce more food than they need to consume themselves. The Bureaucrats-
consume the food, act as parasite on the farmers, as did soldiers.
In
the U.S.
today farmers make up only 2% of the population and each farmer can feed 125 other people. In Ancient
Egypt, farmers could produce enough surplus food to produce 5 times more than his
family needed. Because of the environmental conditions discussed above, the Mayan farmer could only produce
twice the amount of food needed by his family. Thus, large number of farmers required to support a
stratified civilization. At least 70% of Mayan civilization consisted of peasant
farmers. Thus, cities were mostly ceremonial centers for the elite and
not places that normal people lived.
These food limitations may explain why Mayan society was
politically divided into small kingdoms that were always at war with each other. Military success can be limited by food supply. Food needs
to be transported to support an army in the field. Because the Mayans
used human porters to carry corn, a porter needed to be able to carry enough corn to feed himself in addition to food to
feed the soldiers imposing a limit on how far or how long Mayan armies could travel. Thus, the Mayans never became unified into large empires like the
Aztecs or Incas (who had more efficient forms of agricultural production). Mayan cities remained small with most less
than one square mile in area. The average city had 25,000 to
50,000 people who lived within 2-3 days walk of the king’s palaces. In
many places it was possible to see temples of the nearest kingdom from the top
of the temple.
Interestingly,
in 1848 a revolt of Mayan peasants against the Mexicans was affected by food
supply. The Mayans were on the verge of
winning the war, when they had to return to their fields to harvest
crops.
Summary of Mayan Collapse
In his 2005 book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Suceed, Jared Diamond discussed 5 main causes of societal collapses throughout history.
1. Damage to their environment. As
increasing populations forced them to start farming on the hillsides, soil
erosion became a problem causing some locations to lose almost
75% of their fertility over only 10 years. Archaeologists uncovered evidence of sedimentation during excavations. Soil
erosion was made worse by the loss of pine forests that were cleared for fuel,
construction, or plaster (used in building). Archaeologists look for evidence of change in vegetation by looking at pollen records. Acidic soil
from the hills washing down into the valleys might also have reduced
productivity. Scientists
have examined skeletons looking for signs of malnutrition such as porous bones
or stress lines in teeth, Evidence
suggests that health of inhabitants deteriorated prior to collapse.
2. Climate changes (drought). Scientists have looked for
evidence of drought by taking cores from the bottoms of Mayan lakes. Gypsum becomes concentrated when water dries up and O18
becomes concentrated during droughts O16 evaporates so scientists looked at Oxygen isotope ratios in shells. This evidence
suggests that the Mayan
area relatively we from 5500 – 500 BC and from 475-
250 BC was dry. Thus, civilization
arose when it got wetter. Major droughts
occurred around 600 AD ( the time of the fall of Tikal) and 760
AD – 800AD (the time of the classic Mayan collapse).
3. Hostilities among Mayans
Increasing
population with decreasing production would have increased competition for food
and could have led to warfare. Warfare
would decrease amount of land farmed because it created no-man zones between
villages.
4. Political and cultural factors. Once the
rulers were unable to appease the Gods there was not much reason for the
peasants to work for them any more. Evidence suggests that royal palaces were burned as the peasants rejected the rulers. Leaders
were so worried about their short-term fate that they weren’t able to take a
long term perspective.
Additional Reading
Mayan Civilization-
http://www.indians.org/welker/maya.htm
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