Crops failed, especially because the droughts occurred disproportionately during the summer growing season. In a time of unprecedented population density, this combination of factors was likely catastrophic. The lack of forest cover also contributed to erosion and soil depletion. Using population records and measurements from current forested and cleared lands in the region, they constructed a computer model of deforestation in the Yucatan and ran simulations to see how this would have affected rainfall.īecause cleared land absorbs less solar radiation, less water evaporates from its surface, making clouds and rainfall more scarce. As a result, the rapid deforestation exacerbated an already severe drought-in the simulation, deforestation reduced precipitation by five to 15 percent and was responsible for 60 percent of the total drying that occurred over the course of a century as the Mayan civilization collapsed. The other study, published by researchers from Columbia University and elsewhere this week in Geophysical Research Letters, applied quantitative data to these trends. Image via Barbara Trapido-Lurie/Arizona State University The central Yucatan lowland, site of most major Mayan cities, was abandoned due to the stresses of deforestation and drought. Interestingly, they also required massive amounts of wood to fuel the fires that cooked the lime plaster for their elaborate constructions-experts estimate it would have taken 20 trees to produce a single square meter of cityscape. Around this time, they found, severe reductions in rainfall were coupled with an rapid rate of deforestation, as the Mayans burned and chopped down more and more forest to clear land for agriculture. In the first study, published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Arizona State University analyzed archaeological data from across the Yucatan to reach a better understanding of the environmental conditions when the area was abandoned. In his 2005 book Collapse, though, Jared Diamond put forth a different sort of theory-that a prolonged drought, exacerbated by ill-advised deforestation, forced Mayan populations to abandon their cities. That hypothesis has finally been put to the test with archaeological evidence and environmental data and the results published this week in a pair of studies. Scholars and laypeople have proposed countless theories accounting for the collapse, ranging from the plausible (overhunting, foreign invasion, peasant revolt) to the absurd (alien invasion, supernatural forces). It’s long been one of ancient history’s most intriguing mysteries: Why did the Maya, a remarkably sophisticated civilization made up of more than 19 million people, suddenly collapse sometime during the 8th or 9th centuries? Although the Mayan people never entirely disappeared-their descendants still live across Central America-dozens of core urban areas in the lowlands of the Yucatan peninsula, such as Tikal, went from bustling cities to abandoned ruins over the course of roughly a hundred years. Bustling Mayan cities such as Tikal, in present-day Guatemala, were likely abandoned due to a combination of deforestation and drought.
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