Rainfall, temperature, and Classic Maya conflict: A comparison of hypotheses using Bayesian time-series analysis

Collard, Mark; Carleton, W. Christopher; Campbell, David A.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0253043

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…Results indicate that both climate drying and population decline or dispersal correspond to the dramatic increase in civil conflict near the end of the Mayapan occupational sequence. Finally, we also explored the relationship between warm summer/fall sea-surface temperatures in the Cariaco Basin (Venezuela) 74 and conflict, argued to be related to increased warfare in the Maya region at the end of the Classic Period (~700–900 CE) 75 , but found no significant relationship ( p = 0.65).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drought-Induced Civil Conflict Among the Ancient Maya

et al. 2022

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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.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drought-Induced Civil Conflict Among the Ancient Maya

et al. 2022

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“…Archaeology can provide insight into the effects of climate and demographic change on human conflict over large time scales and during periods of greater climate extremes relative to the 20th century ( 4 , 19 , 20 ). Here, we investigate these effects during a 700-y temporal window (750 to 1450 Common Era [CE]) in the Nasca region, located in the central Andean highlands ( Fig.…”

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confidence: 99%

Climate change–induced population pressure drives high rates of lethal violence in the Prehispanic central Andes

McCool

Codding

Vernon

et al. 2022

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Significance Warfare and homicide are pervasive features of the human experience, yet scholars struggle to understand the conditions that promote violence. Climate and conflict research has revealed many linkages between climate change and human violence; however, studies often produce contrary findings, and the driving mechanisms remain difficult to identify. We suggest a solution is to identify conditions producing resource scarcity, which are necessarily a combination of climate and population dynamics. We examine patterns of lethal violence in the Prehispanic Andes and find that favorable climate conditions fostered rapid population growth within a circumscribed landscape, resulting in chronic warfare. Our work suggests that an increasingly unstable climate may promote future violence, where favorable climate regimes incentivize population growth and attendant resource strain.

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“…These records must feed data for mathematical models (Douglas et al, 2016a) such as those in PHYDA, that can take in consideration volcanic eruptions, aerosols (such as the Sahara Dust and wildfires) and insolation (Baek et al, 2019;Steiger et al, 2018;Tejedor et al, 2021b,a). Until now, mathematical models have been constrained to hydroclimatic variables (Collard et al, 2021) and tend to constrain big areas that do not allow the details of the resilience between subregions in MA (Bhattacharya and Coats 2020;Bhattacharya et al, 2017).…”

Section: Final Commentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial and temporal distribution of palaeoclimatic records in the Maya Area

Martinez-Dyrzo

2024

revmexcg

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Palaeoclimatic research has been performed in the Maya Area (MA), using mainly lake sediment cores and speleothems. Most of the studies have been performed in the lowlands, leaving the highlands unexplored. Lake sediments records contain a diversity of proxies (e.g. Mineralogy, isotopes, pollen, charcoal, diatoms, chemicals, magnetic susceptibility, among others) and temporal resolution, making them frequently not easy to compare and leaving numerous gaps of information. Practically all stalagmites are focused on using δ18O as a proxy of effective rainfall during the Maya periods, having only some explored the role of palaeostorms and hurricanes as well as the paleoclimatology of the pre-Maya and modern periods. In this review paper, the location and temporal frame of palaeoenvironmental records of the MA and their proxies are presented, showing the zones and periods that possess environmental information and assessing their resolution. The comparison shows that more high-resolution records with a multi-proxy approach covering most of the Holocene are needed to understand the climate change in different zones of the MA. Finally, the geographic distribution of the diverse recorded hydroclimate responses based on the records is presented for three critical moments in the Maya History that have been associated with dry periods in the Great Maya Droughts hypothesis. This geographic perspective shows that dry events were not presented in all the MA during these moments although they were vastly recorded in both high- and lowlands. The geographic perspective also shows a negligible drought effect in the central lowlands for the Maya Hiatus period, where this cultural phenomenon was identified first. But signals of droughts are presented in other zones of the MA for this period. The distribution of the drought signal also shows that sites that thrived during the Maya Collapse period were in the regions that suffered the strongest droughts, whilst many sites that were abandoned were in regions rich in hydric resources. Explanations are reviewed for these contradictions. Finally, the works towards the development of mathematical models of the environmental variables are briefly reviewed, pointing out the lack of a proper computational model that has been fed by the palaeoclimatic data developed by the records in the MA.

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Rainfall, temperature, and Classic Maya conflict: A comparison of hypotheses using Bayesian time-series analysis

Cited by 8 publications

References 76 publications

Drought-Induced Civil Conflict Among the Ancient Maya

Drought-Induced Civil Conflict Among the Ancient Maya

Climate change–induced population pressure drives high rates of lethal violence in the Prehispanic central Andes

Spatial and temporal distribution of palaeoclimatic records in the Maya Area

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