Randolph College
Lynchburg, VA
Maya Collapse
The temples of Tikal in the northern jungles of Guatemala are some of the most imposing structures in the world. While they would be dwarfed by today’s steel-framed skyscrapers, during the Classical Maya era (250-850AD), they were the tallest buildings in Mesoamerica. The photo below shows Temples I and II in the foreground, Temple IV looming in the background (the tallest at 212 feet), and the North Acropolis to the right.
Visitors to Tikal are impressed by the manner in which the lush jungle coexists with the beautiful remains of this splendid city. In fact, the jungle kept Tikal so well hidden that it was not discovered in modern times until 1848! People marvel that Hernan Cortez, conquistador of Mexico, passed within a mile of Tikal in 1525 but never encountered the city itself.
I visited Tikal this summer on an NEH-funded Maya World Institute and found myself in awe of the temples and the jungle. On a nature walk with a colleague in Tikal, the forest closed in around us, and had we not known better, we would never have guessed that Temple VI was only a stone’s throw away. But the jungle has not always been such a presence. During the height of the Classical Mayan era the city engineers of Tikal had rolled back the forest to construct a magnificent city of about 16 square kilometers. According to Professor William Saturno of the University of New Hampshire, one of our 14 NEH scholars, Tikal was a spectacle to see. Everything was plastered in a brilliant white coating of limestone. There were broad causeways of up to 30 feet carrying pedestrians from building to building. Much of what you see in the photo above would have been white, rather than green.
Unfortunately, that spectacle and beauty may well have contributed to Tikal’s undoing around 900 AD, in what scholars refer to as the great Collapse. One plausible reason for Tikal’s collapse (and for the collapse of much of the rest of the Mayan world) was its exhaustion of limited natural resources. Intense heat from wood fires and lots of water are required to turn limestone into plaster. In fact, four trees were needed to create a single bucket of plaster! So, try to imagine the impact of the limestone plastering of a city the size of Tikal, not only on the jungle, but on the entire hydrologic cycle of the region. And remember that this was going on, not only in Tikal, but in Palenque, Toniná, Copán, Quirigua, and other cities throughout the Mayan world. When enough trees get cut down across a wide enough expanse, transpiration is reduced, and the rains begin to slow. In fact, archaeological evidence suggests that the rains simply stopped for a number of years coinciding with the great collapse. The great rain water collecting reservoirs of Tikal and other cities may have had an 18 months supply, but that would have done little to bring relief in the face of a drought lasting for two to three years. People simply would have had no choice but to flee these cities in hopes of finding greener pastures elsewhere. And, if there were few green pastures because the draught was region-wide, then the entire civilization would have been in trouble.
Note that I have been placing the word collapse in italics. Many Mayan scholars take great exception to this designation. George Lovell, another of our NEH scholars, reminded us that at least half of the current population of Guatemala—some six to seven million people—is made up of indigenous Maya. Not only did they survive the collapse, but they also survived the Spanish conquest, the land seizures associated with the neo-liberal reforms of 1871, and the scorched earth assault of Generals Lucas Garcia, and Rios Montt in the 1970s and 1980s. We learned also that a number of Maya peoples—the Lacandon Maya of Chiapas, Mexico being one prominent example—never even submitted to Spanish rule, but rather fought against the Spaniards and/or resisted in a number of ways. Another of our scholars, Anne Pyburn, strongly objected to the concept of a system-wide collapse. She suggested instead that for many Maya, what is referred to as a collapse was more of a revolution, or at a minimum, it was a liberating experience. Many ordinary farmers and citizens who had never known anything in their lives but authoritarian rule were suddenly free to determine their own destinies.
Anne Pyburn’s thesis lends itself to an explanation for what, to me, has always been a disconnect… namely the fact that one tends to think of the Maya as being a communal people—they think of themselves as communal—yet, pre-classical and classical Maya history suggests authoritarian rule was the norm rather than communitarianism. If, however, the entire societal structure was upended by the collapse, such that ordinary peoples were left to fend for themselves with no rules, regulations, or tribute to be paid, then perhaps communal solutions were employed to ensure survival. Communal solutions are still in use today. In a highlands community that I have studied extensively over the years, San Lucas Tolimán, there is a Catholic Church program that assists the local indigenous population, mostly Cackchequel Maya, in acquiring land. I have observed that a typical landholding arrangement for groups of families receiving land for the first time ever will consist of privately titled plots for individual family homes, but communally-owned land set aside for agriculture and recreation (usually a soccer field).
What does this question regarding the Mayan collapse portend for the United States and other developed countries? That is the most important question I came away with from my summer travels, and one that I will be asking of my students in a number of my economics courses this semester. I am assigning them the chapter on the Maya collapse from Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse, along with his concluding chapter that suggests that our modern society is running through our natural resources at least as fast as the Maya and that collapse might well be inevitable if we don’t change course. This, of course, is a highly controversial notion and my hope is that the controversy will only accentuate the classroom discussion and debate. In addition, I learned during my trip that Diamond’s book is not particularly well received among Maya scholars because of his characterization of the Maya civilization as one that collapsed; i.e., something over and done with in the past. To me, this simply opens further doors for student exploration of the entire issue. Knowing in advance that all these controversies await the reading of these two chapters should simply make the learning experience that much richer.
Allow me to conclude by commenting on the experiential nature of my summer learning experience. There is obviously no textbook substitute for experiencing firsthand something as complicated as Maya history and culture. For me, sitting atop Tikal’s Temple IV and contemplating the world stretched out below was a very moving experience. I tried to imagine how the final ruler of the city, Jasaw Chan K’Awiil II, may have felt as the collapse was occurring, not only in Tikal, but throughout the entire Maya region. If he were atop Temple IV around 870 AD, surely everything would have looked just about normal, wouldn’t it? Everything would have still been glistening white. All the temples and stelae back then would have been in their glory—images and messages carved and painted to perfection. Yet…, the rains had stopped and the reservoirs were long empty. The crops had failed and the people were restless. If he were to perform one more bloodletting ritual would that help? Would another sacrifice bring back the rains…
Asking such questions is a good way to reflect on history and a good way to contemplate the future. The good thing about being a professor is that I will be able to share the personal experiences from this summer institute with my students. We’ll look at my slides, I’ll share my stories, and we’ll engage in some of the controversy related to the Mayan collapse. Perhaps I might be able to inspire two or three of them to seek out their own experiential learning experiences. Perhaps one or two might be inspired by their own experiences to become teachers or professors and have a chance to share their own stories with their own students some day.
MY FILES
VIEW COLLEGE PROFILE
