Drought-Induced Civil Conflict Among the Ancient Maya

Abstract

The influence of climate change on civil conflict and societal instability in the premodern world is a subject of much debate, in part because of the limited temporal or disciplinary scope of case studies. We present a transdisciplinary case study that combines archeological, historical, and paleoclimate datasets to explore the dynamic, shifting relationships among climate change, civil conflict, and political collapse at Mayapan, the largest Postclassic Maya capital of the Yucatán Peninsula in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries CE. Multiple data sources indicate that civil conflict increased significantly and generalized linear modeling correlates strife in the city with drought conditions between 1400 and 1450 cal. CE. We argue that prolonged drought escalated rival factional tensions, but subsequent adaptations reveal regional-scale resiliency, ensuring that Maya political and economic structures endured until European contact in the early sixteenth century CE.

Mid- to Late Holocene geomorphodynamics in a long-term settled mountain catchment in the Pergamon micro-region, western Turkey

“…Strategies for settlement occupation and drivers of settlement abandonment (or the changing settlement pattern) vary in different geographic locations and societies throughout time and are hence controlled by environmental and societal factors (Butzer, 2005(Butzer, , 2012Boyer et al, 2006;McLeman, 2011). Environmental triggers encompass various types of natural hazards such as RCC events, (flash) floods, earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, and the ensuing geomorphodynamics (soil erosion and mass movements) (Black et al, 2011;Dusar et al, 2011;Palmisano et al, 2021;Zhang et al, 2021;Kennett et al, 2022). This last factor might be important in the Tekkedere catchment.…”

Hydroclimate variations in the past 1000 years over Eastern China

“…For example, spatial reconstruction of the hydroclimate variability over the Northern Hemisphere showed that a larger percentage of land area was under relatively wetter conditions in the warm period, and under drier conditions in the cold period. However, some studies found that during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA, AD 950–1250), hydrological anomalies resulted in drier conditions over most parts of the globe (Diaz et al, 2011); in particular, prolonged droughts (roughly AD 750–1050) occurred over the western United States and northern Mexico and drought‐induced civil war conflict that triggered the collapse of the Mayan civilization (Aimers & Hodell, 2011; Kennett et al, 2022). In addition, Wilhelm et al (2022) found a warming of 0.5–1.2°C led to a 25%–50% decrease in the frequency of large floods in the European Alps.…”

Catastrophic climate change and the collapse of human societies

“… Integration of elements indicating: (i) examples of approaches to determine ancient environmental change and societal complexity; (ii) a regional/local ancient collapse described by an example from Mayapan, the largest Postclassic Mayan city [ 20 ]; and (iii) the modern potential global collapses described by Kemp et al. [ 1 ].…”

“…It also highlights the relevance of ancient technologies and management strategies to mitigate the consequences of the complexity of climate change (e.g. Refs [ 20–25 ]).…”

“…The study of collapses of previous human societies, in many cases associated with changes in climate and resource scarcity such as those that currently characterize anthropogenic global change on our planet, sheds light on worst-case scenarios for the coming years and decades of climate change, but also on how to overcome them, on possible resistance and resilience [ 18 , 19 ]. For example, bioarcheological data from Mayapan (Yucatán, Mexico) indicate that Mayan political and economic structures in the shape of a network of small Mayan states persisted until the Spanish colonization, indicating some amount of regional resistance and resilience [ 20 ] (Fig. 1 ).…”