I used to think the Maya collapse was just about drought, but new digs at Tikal changed my view

For years I figured the big drought around 900 AD was the whole story, but the recent work by Dr. Francisco Estrada-Belli's team shows something else. They found evidence of huge earthworks and walls built right before the collapse, which points to a lot of fighting between cities. It looks like war and politics broke things down just as much as the dry weather. What other sites are showing signs that the old collapse theories are too simple?

2 comments

2 Comments

nelson.gavin2d agoMost Upvoted

Yeah, that Tikal find is wild. I was listening to a podcast that talked about Caracol in Belize, where they found proof of a huge war with Tikal that wrecked the area way before the big drought hit. It makes you wonder if the fighting just made everything worse when the climate did turn bad. What's the most interesting site you've read about lately?

smith.anna2d ago

That point about fighting making things worse when the climate turned bad really hits home. I felt the same way reading about @nelson.gavin's mention of Caracol. For me, the site that changed my mind was Copan. They found that the rulers there kept cutting down more and more trees for plaster and farmland right up to the end. So it wasn't just one big drought, it was people slowly wrecking their own environment while also dealing with wars and politics. It all just piled up until the whole system broke.