Forests, fields, and the edge of sustainability at the ancient Maya city of Tikal

Abstract

Tikal has long been viewed as one of the leading polities of the ancient Maya realm, yet how the city was able to maintain its substantial population in the midst of a tropical forest environment has been a topic of unresolved debate among researchers for decades. We present ecological, paleoethnobotanical, hydraulic, remote sensing, edaphic, and isotopic evidence that reveals how the Late Classic Maya at Tikal practiced intensive forms of agriculture (including irrigation, terrace construction, arboriculture, household gardens, and short fallow swidden) coupled with carefully controlled agroforestry and a complex system of water retention and redistribution. Empirical evidence is presented to demonstrate that this assiduously managed anthropogenic ecosystem of the Classic period Maya was a landscape optimized in a way that provided sustenance to a relatively large population in a preindustrial, low-density urban community. This landscape productivity optimization, however, came with a heavy cost of reduced environmental resiliency and a complete reliance on consistent annual rainfall. Recent speleothem data collected from regional caves showed that persistent episodes of unusually low rainfall were prevalent in the mid-9th century A.D., a time period that coincides strikingly with the abandonment of Tikal and the erection of its last dated monument in A.D. 869. The intensified resource management strategy used at Tikal-already operating at the landscape's carrying capacity-ceased to provide adequate food, fuel, and drinking water for the Late Classic populace in the face of extended periods of drought. As a result, social disorder and abandonment ensued.he Late Classic period (A.D. 600-850) was a time of unprecedented architectural, astronomical, and artistic achievement at Tikal, one of the leading urban centers of the ancient Maya realm. It was also a time of meteoric population growth at this bustling cultural center. Notwithstanding its prominence as a major Maya polity, how Tikal's leaders and farmers managed to provide food, fuel, and other sustenance for its many occupants has never been fully understood or quantified.To best assess resource potential at Tikal, we first defined an extraction zone that was extrapolated from archaeological settlement data by creating a Voronoi diagram (1, 2) (Fig. 1). Essentially, this approach proscribes a proportional boundary between Tikal and its surrounding contemporaneous communities: namely, Motul de San Jose, El Zotz, Uaxactún, Xultun, Dos Aguadas, Nakum, Yaxha, and Ixlu. Using this technique, including assigning greater economic clout to Tikal using a 2:1 weighting scheme (see section on the Voronoi diagram in SI Materials and Methods), we calculated that its Late Classic resource extraction zone encompassed ∼1,100 km 2 . This is the area from which the residents of Tikal could obtain their necessary food, fuel, construction timbers, and other living essentials.Superimposing the Voronoi Diagram over satellite images of modern Tikal (2, 3) (Fig. 1), which is mostly...

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