Drought, agricultural adaptation, and sociopolitical collapse in the Maya Lowlands

Abstract

Paleoclimate records indicate a series of severe droughts was associated with societal collapse of the Classic Maya during the Terminal Classic period (∼800-950 C.E.). Evidence for drought largely derives from the drier, less populated northern Maya Lowlands but does not explain more pronounced and earlier societal disruption in the relatively humid southern Maya Lowlands. Here we apply hydrogen and carbon isotope compositions of plant wax lipids in two lake sediment cores to assess changes in water availability and land use in both the northern and southern Maya lowlands. We show that relatively more intense drying occurred in the southern lowlands than in the northern lowlands during the Terminal Classic period, consistent with earlier and more persistent societal decline in the south. Our results also indicate a period of substantial drying in the southern Maya Lowlands from ∼200 C.E. to 500 C.E., during the Terminal Preclassic and Early Classic periods. Plant wax carbon isotope records indicate a decline in C 4 plants in both lake catchments during the Early Classic period, interpreted to reflect a shift from extensive agriculture to intensive, waterconservative maize cultivation that was motivated by a drying climate. Our results imply that agricultural adaptations developed in response to earlier droughts were initially successful, but failed under the more severe droughts of the Terminal Classic period.Maya civilization | drought | societal collapse | climate adaptation | compound-specific isotope analysis

A distribution analysis of the central Maya lowlands ecoinformation network: its rises, falls, and changes

“…It is also now evident that there was a reorganization of the Maya economy during and after an extended drought during the 9th century, providing an ideal example of the adaptive behavior of the ancient Maya populations (Sabloff 2007, Turner and Sabloff 2012, Iannone 2014a. Furthermore, it is now evident that the Maya experienced several such reorganizations during their history (Gunn et al 1995, Brenner et al 2003, Douglas et al 2015. Like the Maya, there are parallel sets of reorganizations among other ancient peoples (see, e.g., Hegmon et al 2008, Cline 2014, Bocinsky et al 2016, for the American Southwest and eastern Mediterranean Bronze/Iron Ages).…”

Transitions between risk management regimes in cities

“…Here four archetypal risk management regimes are defined that reflect a set of intended and unintended practices: collapse, resistance, resilience, and transformation. We specify these terms and associated concepts from an extensive review of literature (Rotberg 2011 andDouglas et al 2015 on analyses of systems under conditions of collapse; Folke et al 2010, Schlüter and Herrfahrdt-Pähle 2011, Wilson et al 2013, Hordijk et al 2014 on resilience and the connective transformability; Brown et al 2013, Ferguson et al 2013, McApline et al 2015 on the concept of transformation and diagnosing transformative change; Binder et al 2013, Polechová and Barton 2015 on the use of different frameworks for analyzing social-ecological systems; Hodbod and Adger 2014 on how to connect resiliency to management system analysis).…”

An anthropological perspective on the climate change and violence relationship

“…Recent discovery of precisely dated cave deposits in Belize offer 2,000 years of subannual rainfall records that, when combined with stone monument inscriptions, broadly track the rise and fall of Classic Maya civilization; however, climate alone is not considered the driver of Maya collapse [58][59][60]. The climate records show anomalously high rainfall coinciding with population growth and wide scale development of urban political centers throughout Central America 440-660 CE.…”

“…Drier conditions first promoted expansion of rainfed swidden maize fields at the expense of forest and soil erosion to feed the population, which models show likely amplified drying and El Niño droughts by exposing more soils to solar radiation and increasing evapotranspiration rates [61,63]. Later shifts to raised bed maize production in wetland areas initially worked, but failed when droughts worsened [60]. During this time, the Maya political system encouraged competition between elite rulers through monument construction, grand rituals, and extensive warfare which diverted labor from food production.…”