The political collapse of Mayapan, the ancient capital city of the Maya on the Yucatn Peninsula, is thought to have been caused by a long period of dry weather.
Mayapan was the capital of 20,000 Maya people in the 13th through 15th century but was abandoned after a rival political group massacred the powerful Cocom family. Historical records show that this collapse took place between 1441 and 1461
According to new evidence, the city's demise may have been bigger than previously thought. As humans wrestle with a future of increased climate change, this is relevant.
The study was co-authored by Marilyn Masson, an archaeologist and chair of the Department of Anthropology at UAlbany. They looked at historical documents for records of violence and looked at human remains for signs of trauma.
Masson, who serves as principal investigator for the Proyecto Econmico de Mayapan, said she and the team found shallow mass graves and evidence of brutal massacre.
She said that some of the skeletons were cut up and burned. They broke and burned the bodies andeffigies of their gods. It is a form of double disrespect.
That wasn't the most shocking finding for the researchers.
The skeletons were dated using an advanced form of radiocarbon dating by the University of California Santa Barbara's anthropology department.
We asked why. Masson said that archaeology reveals something that isn't told in history.
She said there were lots of ethnohistorical records that supported the city's downfall and abandonment. The team suspects environmental factors may have played a role in the massacre that took place up to 100 years ago.
Paleoclimate scientists were able to calculate annual rainfall levels using a dating process that relied on nearby caves and found evidence of a drying trend throughout the 1300s. Researchers found a correlation between a period of dry weather and a decline in population.
There was no centralized long-term grain storage in the Maya. Human migration, population decline, warfare and shifts in political power are thought to be linked to the impacts of rainfall levels on food production.
Masson said that it's not that droughts cause social conflict but that they create the conditions for violence.
According to the study authors, the unrest and rebellion that led to the mass deaths and out migration from Mayapan in the 1300s was caused by the droughts and famines.
Masson believes that hardship can become politicized in the worst way. It can cause people to turn on each other violently.
The authors wrote that the city appeared to have bounced back after this period of unrest and dry weather.
Mayapan was able to bend and bounce back but it was too soon. The city's government was unable to survive another bout like that because they didn't have enough time to recover. It nearly did.
Masson said there are lessons to be learned from how other empires have dealt with environmental hardship.
The Aztec survived the "Famine of One Rabbit," which was caused by a catastrophic dry spell. Masson said that the emperor emptied out stores of food from the capital to encourage people to flee. The empire was stronger than ever after many sold themselves into slavery on the Gulf Coast and eventually bought their way out.
The Aztec imperial regime implemented a strategy that allowed them to recover.
The study concludes that the human responses to the dry spell on the peninsula were complex. Civil conflict and institutional failure were stimulated by the dry spell. Even after Mayapan fell, a resilient network of small Maya states persisted that were encountered by Europeans. As we try to evaluate the potential success or failure of modern state institutions designed to maintain internal order and peace in the face of future climate change, we need to understand the complexity of these institutions.
More information: Douglas J. Kennett et al, Drought-Induced Civil Conflict Among the Ancient Maya, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31522-x Journal information: Nature Communications
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