What Happened to Mayan Civilization
Arthinia Thompson
Professor Loftin Montgomery
HUM 111
April 30, 2014
No one can say for sure why Mayan Civilization disappeared, it was truly remarkable. Around A.D. 900 Mayan civilization disintegrated and, many historians have questioned “how” or “why," but have not been a definite answer to this question. One possible theory is that the Mayan’s civilization grew to such an extent that they deforested so much of the area that it had significant climate changes, which force the Mayan people to immigrate to other regions (Server, 2004); this is part of the scientific background. The Warfare theory would be the next plausible due to the scientist found some of Mayan pottery and other artwork. It was just recently when scientist started to decide what words that were being written and truly comprehend the excellence of their achievements, their great fall and disappearance. Now that there are two new studies being examined to the reasons for the collapse of the Mayan culture, finding the Mayans had a hand in the downfall of their empire.
Scientists have found that drought played a key role, but the Mayans appear to have exacerbated the problem by cutting down the jungle canopy to make way for cities and crops, according to researchers who used climate-model simulations to see how much deforestation aggravated the drought.
The Mayan depends on the water reservoirs from precipitation, this would have a detrimental effect. While both theories sound relevant, scientific data is also consistent to what is happening in the area of Central and South American and the deforestation of the rain forest. Maybe history is repeating.
Reference
What Was Behind Mysterious Collapse of the Mayan Empire ... (n.d.). Retrieved from http://news.yahoo.com/behind-mysterious-collapse-mayan-empire-135617384.html Medina-Elizalde, M & Rohling, E. J. (2012). Collapse of Classic Maya Civilization Related to Modest Reduction in Precipitation. Science 24 February 2012, Vol.353 no. 6071 pp. 956-959. DOL: 1126/science. 1216629 Sever, T. (2004)
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