The Secrets of Mayans: In Search of the Mysterious Civilizations in the Ancient World | Dark matter
A sophisticated civilisation thrived in Mesoamerica, a territory spanning from southern Mexico through Central America, centuries before the arrival of the Europeans. The Maya were experts in astronomy, produced a complex written language, erected enormous temples, and left behind priceless items.
The Mayan civilisation in Mesoamerica had one of the highest populations ever recorded, according to NASA archaeologist Tom Sever. After two millennia of steady expansion, the Mayan population peaked around 800 A.D. In the countryside, there were 500–700 people per square mile, whereas there were 1,800–2,600 people per square mile close to the Mayan Empire's capital (in what is now northern Guatemala). In contrast, the population density in Los Angeles County per square mile was 2,345 in 2000. Sever, however, discovered that the population had collapsed by 950 A.D. after looking at the ruins of Mayan villages. Perhaps 90 to 95 percent of the Maya perished, he estimated.
For Sever, understanding how the Maya excelled in Mesoamerica—but eventually failed—is more than just cracking a 1,200-year-old puzzle. Since the 1980s, he has worked to comprehend the Maya people's past and the environment in which they lived, as these events may have significant implications for the current inhabitants of that region. Sever and his colleagues want to help governments and individuals in Mesoamerica make sure that the region can continue to support the people who live there by using satellite data and climate models. Modern humanity may be able to escape their fate by studying the Maya.
Mayan Deforestation
The Mayan kingdom, which had its core in northern Guatemala's Petén region, spanned the lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula before it fell. Approximately 1,200 years ago, when weed pollen nearly entirely replaced tree pollen, the region saw widespread deforestation, according to pollen samples taken from columns of dirt that archeologists have unearthed throughout the region. Increased erosion and evaporation resulted from the removal of the rainforest; thick layers of debris swept into lakes serve as a reminder of the devastation.
The Mayan ruins' thick floor stones are "another piece of evidence," Sever continued. To generate a fire big enough and hot enough to create a plaster floor stone that is roughly one square meter, they would have needed about 20 trees. These stones were at least a foot thick in the early ruins, but they gradually became thinner. The ones that had just been constructed were only a few inches thick. Bob Oglesby, an atmospheric scientist at Marshall Space Flight Center and a colleague of Sever's, refers to the Mayan deforestation episode as "the granddaddy of all deforestation events." Studies of settlement artifacts reveal that this deforestation occurred at the same time as a sharp decline in Mayan population.
"This area was abandoned following the Mayan collapse, and the forest grew back. But over the past three decades, as people have moved back, deforestation has resumed," Sever said. The largest tropical forests in Central America are currently found in the Petén, where they have recovered. Even though modern-day deforestation in the Petén region hasn't yet reached Mayan levels, current technologies might easily allow modern inhabitants to outperform the Maya in tree-cutting. Between 1990 and 2000, Guatemala saw an average annual rate of 1.7 percent deforestation, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
The long-gone Mayan culture not only serves as a cautionary story about what might happen to civilizations when they clear-cut surrounding forests, but it also provides insights for a more sustainable use of the terrain. For two millennia, the Maya flourished in Central America until their devastating decline. Sever stated, "We don't know how to use this landscape well now, therefore we want to know how the Maya used it. Sever has at least one theory, even though the Maya's keys to success are more obscure than their causes of failure.
People who live in heavily forested areas frequently depend on slash-and-burn farming. This could appear to be the Maya's strategy at first look, but Sever disagrees. "In slash-and-burn agriculture, people clear the land to plant corn, for instance," he explained. "They receive 100% productivity the first year, 60% the next year, and something less after that. They must relocate since the land will be practically useless in three to five years. Slash-and-burn agriculture may be effective in a poorly inhabited area, but Mesoamerica in the year 800 A.D. was one of the most densely populated regions in the pre-industrial world. A population wouldn't have been able to increase to that extent under slash-and-burn, he claimed.
Sever thinks the Maya used efficient water management as a different method of farming. The greatest danger to our fieldwork in this area, according to Sever, is dehydration. Even in the rainforest, there is a seasonal dry period; the trees survive by drawing water from the ground. The Maya relied on precipitation since they couldn't access groundwater because it was 500 feet below them and they lacked the means to get there.
Rainwater collects in swamplands known as bajos, which make up around 40% of the landscape in the Petén area Sever investigates. However, excavations and satellite photographs have discovered networks of canals amid the bajos that were reportedly created during the time of the Maya. Today, that precipitation evaporates before anyone can use it properly. Sever speculates that the Maya may have redirected and recycled rainwater through the canals. This labor-intensive agriculture would have barely kept up with demand, keeping farmers busy all day. However, if the Maya had farmed the bajos, they would have utilized an additional 40% of the area, significantly increasing food output.
The bajos are disregarded by contemporary Mesoamericans as being useless. We're attempting to comprehend how to manage water so that the landscape can support the current population while easing some of the pressure on the economy and environment, according to Sever.
Climate Change
Oglesby hypothesized that the Maya's improved productivity from farming the bajos may have ultimately led to their success. According to him, population pressure may have forced them to clear more and more ground for settlement and agriculture. To assist visualize the end of the Mayans, Oglesby has used three-dimensional regional climate models, and what he has discovered so far is intriguing.
According to Oglesby, "We find that it gets considerably warmer—as much as 5 to 6 degrees Celsius—if we completely deforest the area and replace it with grassland." Instead of warming the ground, sunlight that typically evaporates water from the rainforest canopy does so. Oglesby believes that deforestation caused a drought, despite the fact that his model overstates the situation (the area was significantly deforested but probably not fully so) and creates a more dramatic picture than what actually occurred. The Mayan deforestation appears to have corresponded with natural climate instability, which was already causing a drought, according to lake sediment cores. "The drought was a double whammy combined with the land-use changes," he said. The Mayan lowland cities were largely abandoned by 950 A.D.
Learning from the Mayan Legacy
Only a small portion of Central America's population density remains from the height of the Mayan civilization today. For instance, in Belize, there may only be 26 persons per square mile (or 10 per square kilometer) of land. Yet there is still a substantial amount of human pressure on the environment.
Sever realized the value of contemporary tree-cutting technologies in the late 1980s. He was employed by NASA and the National Geographic Society to research the prospective effects of a hydroelectric project on Guatemala's Usumacinta River. Sever once more used satellite photos after being the first to employ remote sensing data to locate archaeological sites. He created an image of a portion of the Guatemala–Mexico border using Landsat data. In satellite photos, political borders are typically invisible, but this border was plain to see. At the Mexican border, where the land had been destroyed, the rainforest—which was still present in Guatemala—came to an abrupt end.
The president of Guatemala was in awe of Sever's photos. Sever stated that border tensions between Mexico and Guatemala had existed for roughly 150 years. But once they saw the satellite image, the presidents of the two countries "decided that the environment must unite them." Vinicio Cerezo, the president of Guatemala, and Carlos Salinas, the president of Mexico, exchanged handshakes and vowed to conserve the rainforest during a ceremony on a bridge spanning a river between their nations. It signaled the start of a bigger campaign to safeguard Mesoamerica's ecosystem.
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