Kax and kol: Collapse and resilience in lowland Maya civilization

Abstract

Episodes of population loss and cultural change, including the famous Classic Collapse, punctuated the long course of Maya civilization. In many cases, these downturns in the fortunes of individual sites and entire regions included significant environmental components such as droughts or anthropogenic environmental degradation. Some afflicted areas remained depopulated for long periods, whereas others recovered more quickly. We examine the dynamics of growth and decline in several areas in the Maya Lowlands in terms of both environmental and cultural resilience and with a focus on downturns that occurred in the Terminal Preclassic (second century Common Era) and Terminal Classic (9th and 10th centuries CE) periods. This examination of available data indicates that the elevated interior areas of the Yucatán Peninsula were more susceptible to system collapse and less suitable for resilient recovery than adjacent lower-lying areas.

Water and sustainable land use at the ancient tropical city of Tikal, Guatemala

“…Our work suggests that the system of reservoirs and early water diversion features were established at the onset of a Terminal Preclassic drying trend, an adaptation that likely helped Tikal and some other centers survive, whereas many others were abandoned (27). Subsequent periods of water redirection indicate the decommissioning of the Corriental Reservoir switching station and the infilling of the carved bedrock canal leading into it, a reflection of the greater abundance of water during the Classic period.…”

“…5C). The end of the Late Preclassic has been frequently associated with an intensified drought cycle (27).…”

“…§ During the dry season, waters are posited to have been incrementally released by dismantling the earthen dam and switching the flow out of the tank at this East Gate location. Sometime after the Late Preclassic, a period of greater precipitation (27), the deep V-shaped ingress canal was carefully infilled and sealed with a dense composite of crushed limestone cement, not unlike the matrices used in plaza floors or portions of the most elaborate weight-bearing wall sections at uptown Tikal, thus preventing the redirection of waters into the tank (the decommissioning of the canal segment into the reservoir corresponds sequentially with the water diversion function of the northern berm construction). A postulated plug or dam (Fig.…”

“…Ancient climatic instability is recorded in the region, with several researchers suggesting drought peaks during the Terminal Preclassic period in the second century (27,28) followed by conditions more like today or until the 9th and 10th centuries, when a series of droughts (29)(30)(31) aided in severely fragmenting the established political and social order (32). Our work suggests that the system of reservoirs and early water diversion features were established at the onset of a Terminal Preclassic drying trend, an adaptation that likely helped Tikal and some other centers survive, whereas many others were abandoned (27).…”

Cultural implications of late Holocene climate change in the Cuenca Oriental, Mexico

“…Other lines of evidence can reveal the complexity of human responses to drought: For colonial Mexico, archival sources have provided important evidence on the ways existing administrative practices and social conflicts preconditioned responses to drought (25). Land use histories inferred from detailed geomorphic evidence have shed light on the ways the ancient Maya adapted to climate change (26,27). However, detailed correlative studies, like the one presented here, can identify the extent to which cultural change and environmental stressors track each other, and therefore can serve as the first step in more detailed analyses of human−environment interactions.…”