The Maya Decline

The causes of the decline of Maya classic civilization is remain a mystery. Various theories about the Maya decline have been suggested. Epidemic diseases, such as yellow fever and malaria are probably post-Colombian imports to America. There is also no convincing evidence that the decline of Maya civilization was caused by natural disaster such as earthquakes or devastating droughts.

Gradually worsening crop failures and food shortages seem more possible to explain the cause of Maya decline. The ancient Maya keep on cutting and burning of forest cover as their method of land clearing (slash and burn farming). This method of land clearing produced man-made savannas covered with tough grass that could not be tilled by their digging stick methods.

But the slash and burn farming method have been used in Central America for several centuries and have not produced savanna lands. The latter, as they interspersed through the forests of the Peten, appear to be Natural rather than man-made.

Another theory says that Classic Period population pressure made intensive farming, which denuded the land of its finest top soils, but intensive cultivation in Peten or Yucatan is impossible today without fertilizers and probably was impossible in the past.

Third theory assumes that the tropical soils of Maya lowland were inadequate to support the populations that Maya civilization developed elsewhere and was brought to the lowlands.

Fourth theory sees the river and lakes of the Peten gradually drying up and a general water shortage causing the abandonment. But this theory could hardly have been the case, because such rivers as the Usumacinta and the Belize did not dry up and Maya centers along the banks were deserted as well as the more centrally located Peten sites.

Social and political factors offer a most reasonable explanation of the Maya collapse:

-     From a count of ceremonial centers and house mound studies, known that the Maya population increased during the classic period. A large and growing population was bound to have placed a burden on the productive capacities of both man and land.

-     While the population was growing, wars and tribal dislocations were brewing all over Mesoamerica. The wars and tribal dislocations had started with the fall of Teotihuacan at the end of the sixth century. The adoption of Mexican militaristic and beliefs, and the infiltration of such things as the alien cult of human sacrifice into Maya religion, produce internal conflict between Maya priest leaders and the farmers.

All these factors are enough to have brought about a crisis. If peasant trust in the old aristocratic leadership was lost, it is not surprising that the old life in the centers religion, ceremony, arts and intellectual life disappeared for lack of support.

During this disintegration, peasant populations could have continued to life for a time in the localities of the abandoned centers. But the complex structure of Maya society was broken up. And the old patterns of Maya theocratic civilization were significantly modified or destroyed. Whatever the causes, the Maya decline remains a mystery.