How Did The Mayans Disappear
Damien Juarez
ANTH 201 - 1001
Professor Hughes
April 6, 2013
Mayan Research paper The Mayan civilization is all but a dull one. Mathematical geniuses, engineering wizards, an abundance of food, water, resources, and the nicest weather of the earth shines down on their native land in an almost perfect utopia. Yet, the majority of their population at the time seems to have mysteriously disappeared out of nowhere. However, the Mayan people are anything but extinct with their overall headcount around ten million (Coe). That’s right. Ten million of the once almost extinct Maya people roam the earth today. However, at one point in time (approximately 1000 A.D.) the population had dropped to about 30,000 (Coe). How could this have happened? …show more content…
Slowly but surely, cities in the lowlands started to become abandoned but with no sign of struggle. By the time 900 A.D. came around the lowlands had collapsed (Proskouriakoff). For so long it has been a mystery as to why these peoples of genius just disappeared. Scholars have come up with several different theories as to why this has happened. Was it starvation of the land? If this was the case then wouldn’t they have just moved to another location where food was abundant or change their diet? The city-states were always at a constant war with each other and this could have disturbed the order of trade and caused one superior city to stomp out the rest. This is also very unlikely. The last theory is that a huge dramatic environmental change occurred and wiped out the people. Could an earthquake send over half of a population into nothing? A giant dust cloud is what shut out the sun and killed off the dinosaurs, right? An extreme drought could have dried out a city like Tikal that depended on rainwater for farming and drinking. So with the stripping of the land and lack of water to keep alive whatever was left of the land, the Maya must have decided to move and from not being able to find a close enough stable environment to supply them with drinkable water, they “vanished”. Also with the occasional Spaniard coming over to join and learn the ways of the native, he/she must have passed off a disease that the Maya were not familiar with, wiping out a large number of the total head count. The survivors of preclassic period moved onto the Post-classic period and what a coincidence that all of the survivors were inhabitants of the highlands where rainwater was a weekly if not daily visitor. That is my proposal to the disappearance of the great Mayan people of
ANTH 201 - 1001
Professor Hughes
April 6, 2013
Mayan Research paper The Mayan civilization is all but a dull one. Mathematical geniuses, engineering wizards, an abundance of food, water, resources, and the nicest weather of the earth shines down on their native land in an almost perfect utopia. Yet, the majority of their population at the time seems to have mysteriously disappeared out of nowhere. However, the Mayan people are anything but extinct with their overall headcount around ten million (Coe). That’s right. Ten million of the once almost extinct Maya people roam the earth today. However, at one point in time (approximately 1000 A.D.) the population had dropped to about 30,000 (Coe). How could this have happened? …show more content…
Slowly but surely, cities in the lowlands started to become abandoned but with no sign of struggle. By the time 900 A.D. came around the lowlands had collapsed (Proskouriakoff). For so long it has been a mystery as to why these peoples of genius just disappeared. Scholars have come up with several different theories as to why this has happened. Was it starvation of the land? If this was the case then wouldn’t they have just moved to another location where food was abundant or change their diet? The city-states were always at a constant war with each other and this could have disturbed the order of trade and caused one superior city to stomp out the rest. This is also very unlikely. The last theory is that a huge dramatic environmental change occurred and wiped out the people. Could an earthquake send over half of a population into nothing? A giant dust cloud is what shut out the sun and killed off the dinosaurs, right? An extreme drought could have dried out a city like Tikal that depended on rainwater for farming and drinking. So with the stripping of the land and lack of water to keep alive whatever was left of the land, the Maya must have decided to move and from not being able to find a close enough stable environment to supply them with drinkable water, they “vanished”. Also with the occasional Spaniard coming over to join and learn the ways of the native, he/she must have passed off a disease that the Maya were not familiar with, wiping out a large number of the total head count. The survivors of preclassic period moved onto the Post-classic period and what a coincidence that all of the survivors were inhabitants of the highlands where rainwater was a weekly if not daily visitor. That is my proposal to the disappearance of the great Mayan people of