Maya Civilization Collapse Research Paper

There can be many factors for why a civilization might collapse such as environmental change, depleting resources from over extracting, enemy take over, natural disasters, and several other factors. All of these factors or just one can make a settlement crumble at the height of its power and slowly or rapidly cease to exist. Similarities between the collapsing of settlements have been observed over time starting with the rising of the civilization due to good circumstances then reaching a point where the influence of power can go no further then steadily deteriorating back into a simple population with no power. This is the cycle of civilizations time after time gaining power which can span a long time or could only last a short while, peaking in power and territory, then losing all its power in the end over the span of mere decades. An example of environmental collapse would be Mesopotamia, their wealth stemmed from the trading of crops to its respectable traders. Mesopotamia left no room for other forms of wealth and exposed itself to collapse because having only one object of
This collapse could be described as a domino effect of different factors such as growing demand for food and water leading to incapability to meet demand. This was followed by environmental factors such as a drought that further hindered the production of food and water to make the demand of the growing population of around ten million people impossible to feed. Warfare can be another factor that led to the collapse of the Maya because the Maya were one of the wealthiest societies other societies sought to take over the Maya civilization and its trade networks. All these factors have been found by archaeologists to have affected the Maya civilization and contributed to the Maya downfall along with many other prominent civilizations of the prehistoric