There also is evidence that they adopted new resource conservation practices to mitigate the additional stress of supporting larger numbers of people. Dramatic population growth in certain areas suggests that local communities may have absorbed these migrant groups. One main consequence was that people moved around the lowlands. As of now, these “megadroughts” do appear to line up with the final centuries of the Classic Period. For instance, it appears that not all areas of the Maya lowlands were affected equally. Archaeologists are still debating the exact timing, intensity, impact, and location of these droughts. Kenneth Seligson, CC BY-ND Coping with megadroughtsĪvailable data indicate that a series of particularly intense droughts, lasting anywhere from three to 20 years or more, hit the Maya lowlands in the ninth and 10th centuries A.D. An experimental burnt lime pit-kiln, modeled on ancient pit-kilns excavated in the Northern Lowlands. And they developed fuel-efficient technologies, such as burnt lime pit-kilns, to sustain environmental resources.

They carefully managed forests by monitoring the growth cycles of particularly useful trees. They engineered intricate drainage and storage systems that maximized the capture of rainwater. The overarching key to survival was learning to adapt to changing environmental conditions.įor example, the Maya developed ever more elaborate terrace and irrigation networks to protect against soil runoff and nutrient depletion. However, longer droughts stressed their political hierarchy and complex inter-regional trade networks. If the rains did not come as expected for a year or two, communities could rely on stored water. Plate with Maize God imagery, Mexico, 600-900 A.D. Maximizing water efficiency and storage, and timing the planting season correctly, were very important. Additionally, each year was sharply divided between dry and rainy seasons.

Laser mapping has shown that by the eighth century A.D., sophisticated agricultural systems supported city-states of tens of thousands of people.Īvailable evidence suggests that although the climate remained relatively stable for much of the Classic Period, there were occasional periods of decreased precipitation. A combination of factors, including environmental changes, contributed to the breakdown of many of these large Preclassic centers after the start of the first millennium A.D.īeginning around 250 A.D., populations once again began to grow steadily in the Maya lowlands. The earliest villages in the Maya lowlands date as far back as 2000 B.C., with several large cities developing over the following 2,000 years. Instead of focusing on the final stages of Classic Maya civilization, society can learn from the practices that enabled it to survive for nearly 700 years as we consider the effects of climate change today. What’s more, based on my own research in the Northern Yucatan Peninsula and work by my colleagues throughout the broader Maya region, I believe Maya communities’ ability to adapt their resource conservation practices played a crucial role in allowing them to survive for as long as they did.

However, the Maya did not disappear: Over 6 million Maya people live mainly in Eastern Mesoamerica today. Many people believe that the ancient Maya civilization ended when it mysteriously “collapsed.” And it is true that the Maya faced many climate change challenges, including extreme droughts that ultimately contributed to the breakdown of their large Classic Period city-states. 250-950 in Eastern Mesoamerica, the region that is now Guatemala, Belize, Eastern Mexico, and parts of El Salvador and Honduras. While Earth has not been this warm in human history, we can learn about coping with climate change by looking to the Classic Maya civilization that thrived between A.D. This news adds to growing concern that climate change will likely wreak serious damage on our planet in the coming decades. Carbon dioxide concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere have reached 415 parts per million-a level that last occurred more than three million years ago, long before the evolution of humans.

Maya civilization people