USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts & Sciences

The Maya civilization lasted from around 2000 B.C. until the arrival of the Spanish to Mesoamerica in the 16^th century. It extended throughout the northern part of Central America, including all of present-day Guatemala and Belize as well as parts of El Salvador, Honduras, and southern Mexico. The Maya are known for their artful iconography, monumental architecture (frequently visited by tourists), sophisticated mathematical/astronomical systems, and having the only known writing system in the prehistoric Americas. Despite its many strengths and centuries of flourishing, the Maya civilization experienced a total collapse that is worth examining as a lesson for present civilizations.

Map of Maya area

Maya history has been divided into three periods: Preclassic, Classic, and Postclassic. The Classic period is considered to be the height of Maya civilization in terms of population, monumental building, and kingship. It begins around A.D. 250 and lasts until around A.D. 909, the last known date on any Maya monument. In addition to the cessation of building, we also see a dramatic decline in population at the end of the Classic period: between 90 and 99% of the population disappears after A.D. 800. Cities are completely deserted and in many cases reclaimed by the jungle, where they remain hidden to the outside world until rediscovery in the 19^th century.

Like many ancient civilizations around the globe, the Maya rulers liked to tout their power and authority by building palaces and monuments with inscriptions that were solely concerned with kings and nobles and functioned to reinforce their might. Most of the writing that comes down to us today is in the form of this kind of propaganda, as well as a limited number of books containing astronomical tables which they used to predict celestial events and keep track of time. The royal inscriptions include these Long Count calendar dates, which are useful for tracking the development and decline of monumental architecture associated with the Classic Maya peak and collapse.

Inscription from Copan

Unlike many ancient civilizations across the globe, and particularly the Inca in western South America, the Maya do not constitute a single empire. Maya governance consisted of polities (small hierarchical states) ruled by kings, which usually consisted of a capital city and smaller neighboring towns, although some polities extended over larger areas and exerted control over smaller polities in something like a mini-empire. Any dreams of more extensive conquest, however, were crushed by limitations of agricultural production and food supply—also thought to be a major factor in the Maya collapse.

Maya agricultural production consisted mainly of corn, grown on fields that were made by clearing and burning parts of the forest. Slash-and-burn (or swidden) agriculture, as it is called, results in fields that can be farmed for up to a few years before the soil becomes exhausted of nutrients. After this time, the field must be left fallow for fifteen to twenty years, during which wild vegetation has a chance to grow back and recharge the soil. Although other farming techniques were also used in an attempt to increase productivity, these efforts were not enough to offset the strain on food supply caused by high population demand. Even in periods of abundance, corn could not be stored for more than a year because of humidity. The limited food supply made long-distance travel difficult, limiting communication across polities as well as the possibility of sustaining large military campaigns that would be necessary for empire building. The mismanagement of these resources on local and state levels would eventually contribute to the undermining of an entire civilization.

In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond identifies five “strands” constituting the Classic Maya collapse.

1. The first of these is the outstripping of available resources by population growth. In order to accommodate rising numbers, farmers used up all of the available land and often did not wait for the fields to fallow, which ultimately led to lower yields of poor quality.
2. The second strand is also a direct consequence of land overuse: deforestation and hillside erosion. Fewer trees meant less water evaporating from leaves into the atmosphere, which leads to less rain and the possibility of drought. And without tree roots holding the soil down in place, the nutrient-carrying top layer was much more prone to being swept away and deposited in hillside watersheds, causing a reduction in the amount of useable farmland when what they needed was just the opposite.
3. Fewer resources meant increased fighting. Diamond gives the analogy of trying to cram 5 million people into an area smaller than the state of Colorado. There were wars between separate kingdoms over claims to limited resources as well as fighting within a kingdom. Disgruntled subjects who had supported the lifestyle and building projects of the royal court, all on the divinely-based promise of rain and prosperity, lost faith and turned on their rulers.
4. Making matters worse was the inevitability of climate change. Although the Maya had lived through several droughts before, the drought that came at the end of the Classic period was the most prolonged and severe. The landscape was fully saturated with inhabitants at this time, making escape to the few areas that still had reliable water supplies an unfeasible solution.
5. The fifth strand is the failure of the kings and nobles to perceive and solve these problems. They seemed to have been more concerned with erecting monuments and waging wars than recognizing long-term issues and learning from past environmental events. The lack of communication between polities prevented any large-scale efforts toward a common solution.

After the Classic collapse, Maya civilization never returned to its former capacity or modes of operation. The remaining population dispersed across the region and was eventually subdued by the Spanish. The Maya people never fully disappeared, and persist to this day in southern Mexico and Central America where they constitute a diverse range of cultural identities.

Michelle Lim is a rising senior from Queens, NY, currently double-majoring in Narrative Studies and Interdisciplinary Archaeology at USC. She is interested in the cultural systems, thoughts, and stories of the (near & distant) past, especially the ways in which they inform and enrich our present. In the future, Michelle would like to pursue nonfiction writing for topics including science and social commentary.