History Of The Ancient Maya

In the Ponderosa Pine forests of the American Southwest, modern-day fires, marked by billowing smoke plumes, have been dubbed “mega fires” due to their immense size and intense paths of ruin. The canopies of these pines are being incinerated and thus destroyed in regions of New Mexico and Arizona. However, this area used to not burn so dramatically. Years ago, the fire regime, or pattern, was much different (Roos 2016: “Megafires” lecture).
Fire has burned on earth for millennia, far longer than humans, the fire species, have even existed. Where there is fuel, there are flames, even in the most ancient times here on Earth. But once the human race arrived and began to settle in fire-relevant landscapes, the natural fire regimes of environments
This does not exclude environmental decision making.
An example of an ancient society where ideology inhibited ecological resilience is the Ancient Maya.
The Classic Period of the Ancient Maya civilization began by 300 AD (Sabloff 2008: 35). This civilization grew out of Mesoamerica, in the area that is now modern day Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico. This society was with a ruling elite that controlled large labor pools, labor which constructed many large, public and religious edifices (Sabloff 2008: 35). At its beginning, this period already had developed innovative craft activities, a hieroglyphic writing system, and s 365 day calendar. The Maya flourished for centuries during the Classic Period, especially the elite royals. The nobility lived an extravagant lifestyle, consuming luxurious food and drink, including dishes from the cacao, the sweet pod that is a key ingredient in chocolate. They wore extravagant jewelry and ordered the construction of sophisticated architecture such as palaces and temples (Roos 2016: “Ideological Traps” Lecture). They sponsored artisans and scribes and organized trade and production. But most important to note about these nobles was their “relation” to the gods. The Maya elite were the “representations of the gods” on Earth, medians between earth and heaven (Sabloff 2008:
The young men worked to put out every fire that occurred naturally or due to human involvement, stamping out the flames licking the forests of Montana and Idaho. It was the ideology of the US Forest Service and Gifford Pinchot that the modern Americans were rational and had the ability to control fire by stomping it out completely (Roos 2016: “Fire” lecture). However, this is where ideology inhibits