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The Classic Maya Collapse in the Northern Lowlands

E. Wyllys Andrews

June 2012

When the Spanish first arrived in Yucatan, they found thriving seacoast towns with

large buildings along the east coast of the peninsula, but inland they encountered a far more

dispersed population and smaller settlements lacking impressive structures. The entire

northern Maya lowlands, including most of the modern states of Yucatan, Campeche, and

Quintana Roo, are thought to have been home to no more than 600,000 to 1,000,000

inhabitants, a small fraction of the Maya who lived here in the Late Classic period. By 1549,

diseases from the Old World and the disruption of native society further reduced the northern

Maya to about 250,000, according to the ethnohistorian Ralph Roys. This final decline in the

early Colonial period, inadvertently caused by the Spaniards and illuminated by early

Spanish historical records, is no mystery.

The mystery that has confounded students of the Maya for more than a century

involved events a half a millennium earlier, when the world of the lowland Maya changed

forever. At the end of the Classic period, beginning about 760 and continuing until about

950, the rulers and noble families of Maya lowland cities and towns in Mexico, Guatemala,

Belize, and Honduras erected their final carved stone monuments and stopped building new

temples, palaces, and administrative complexes, sometimes abruptly. Virtually all urban

areas were abandoned by 950, and many cities lost most of their population before 850. In

some regions this process was marked by warfare or other signs of social unrest. Conflict and

decline seem to have begun along the Usumacinta drainage by 760, and by 810 or 830 most

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western and some central lowland cities, including Piedras Negras, Yaxchilan, and Palenque,

had collapsed. Sites in the eastern and southeastern regions of the lowlands such as Caracol,

Quirigua, and Copan declined rapidly about the same time. The southern cities that appear to

have lasted longest lie near the central axis of the Yucatan Peninsula, between the eastern

and western groups. Among the best known of these are Seibal, Tikal, Uaxactun, Calakmul,

and Becan, some with carved inscriptions dating as late as 870, 890, or possibly later. The

southern lowlands were never completely abandoned, but by about 900 the population of the

large cities is estimated to have been less than one tenth of what it was during the Late

Classic peak, and the number of inhabitants in the south continued to decline for many years

afterwards.

Many Maya cities of the northern lowlands remained strong, vibrant, and densely

inhabited for a few decades longer than their southern counterparts, but by 910 or 925 most

large communities in the northern lowlands had also ceased to construct large public

buildings, and rulers no longer commissioned carved monuments. As in the southern

lowlands, the decline of the ruling centers of cities and towns was accompanied by

plummeting populations. The rulers of Chichen Itza are thought to have continued building

large, public structures for perhaps 75 or 100 years beyond the time when other northern

population centers had gone into decline and to have remained a powerful community until

after 1000. Trying to understand how one population center, along with a few of its allies,

survived the otherwise nearly ubiquitous Classic Maya collapse for a few generations has

remained a difficult task for Maya archaeologists.

Explanations of the Classic Maya Collapse

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The causes of the collapse and near abandonment of hundreds of Maya cities and

towns throughout the Yucatan Peninsula in a little over a century have been obscure. Most

conceivable explanations have been advanced at one time or another, but Maya

archaeologists are still far from agreement. This chapter will review a few of the current

explanations of the Classic collapse, summarize the Terminal Classic evidence from several

individual Maya sites, especially those in the northern lowlands, and then argue that the main

cause of the end of Classic Maya civilization was a severe and prolonged drought that was

felt across Mesoamerica.

Early in the twentieth century, Sylvanus G. Morley, one of the first great Maya

archaeologists, noticed that hieroglyphic inscriptions and monumental construction in the

southern lowlands ended before 900 and that in northern Yucatan and Quintana Roo Maya

society continued to flourish long afterwards, especially at Chichen Itza and, later, Mayapan.

He called the southern cities the Old Empire and the Yucatan cities the New Empire,

suggesting a migration from south to north after overpopulation caused the southern

agricultural system to fail. Morley=s explorations had convinced him that Late Classic

settlements were far more numerous and vastly larger than those of the Early Classic, leading

to catastrophic and rapid failure. J. Eric S. Thompson, the most influential figure in Maya

studies in the mid-twentieth century, attributed the collapse, in both south and north, to a

revolt of the lower classes, who were tired of building temples for their priestly overlords. It

has been suggested that Thompson=s view of Maya social dynamics was influenced by

political and revolutionary events in early twentieth-century Europe and Russia.

As archaeologists learned more about the ancient Maya, explanations of the Classic

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collapse usually came to invoke several factors. The first attempt to reach a consensus was a

conference that resulted in a 1973 book, The Classic Maya Collapse, much of which was

written by Gordon R. Willey and his students. Most of the authors were in general agreement

on several points. First, they recognized that the number of Late Classic sites throughout the

lowlands grew enormously, as did the overall population. Second, the lowlands saw a rapid

decline in monumental construction and hieroglyphic inscriptions after about 771, followed

by a complete social and demographic collapse. And finally, the authors noted that most of

the lowlands, especially the south, experienced little or no recovery in the centuries that

followed. Explaining the end of the Classic period in the northern lowlands, however, posed

a problem, because it was not yet clear whether the Puuc cities were roughly

contemporaneous with the Late Classic centers of the southern lowlands or whether they

postdated the southern collapse.

The authors had recognized that earlier characterizations of Maya society were

overly simple, that intensive subsistence practices were capable of supporting far higher

population densities than was simple rotating milpa agriculture, that Maya ceremonial

centers were in fact densely populated urban settlements, and that the Maya, far from being

isolated and provincial, were connected with the rest of Mesoamerica by regular

communication, including trade in both common and luxury goods. They posited a widening

gulf between an elite class and an increasingly exploited peasantry, in a time of growing

competition and conflict among centers and agricultural stress stemming from demographic

pressures. To explain the collapse, in accord with these changing perceptions of the ancient

Maya, Willey wrote, Aa coincidence of an array of disturbing factorsCtrade disruptions,

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social unrest, agricultural difficulties, diseaseCappears to have coalesced to administer a

shock to the Maya polity . . . which exceeded the recuperative capacity of the Maya Lowland

sociocultural system, especially its capacity of elite management.@

At least two aspects of this multicausal model are of interest today, forty years later.

Advances in lowland Maya archaeology enabled the 1973 authors to identify weaknesses in

the system about which Morley and Thompson could only guess, but although they better

understood the potential vulnerability of the system, they were not closer to understanding

why the collapse happened. A second point is that, with some exceptions, today=s

explanations of the collapse, for both the southern and northern lowlands, are not strikingly

different from those of forty years ago. Most of them involve some combination of

agricultural failures, competition, conflict, or failure of Classic lowland political systems,

and all accept evidence of vastly increased Late Classic populations. Let us mention a few

current explanations.

Inscriptions at major sites during the Classic period document a system of

governance headed by a dynastic ruler who had divine authority. Could it be that this system

was top-heavy, inflexible, and unresponsive in the face of increasing stress? Perhaps, but

although this system did disappear after the Classic, it is unclear whether its shortcomings

were responsible for the collapse. Although royal and elite lineages seem to have been far

separated from the mass of the people, some archaeologists believe that at larger sites Maya

society was developing a large middle class.

Widespread and continuous warfare as the Late Classic progressed is thought by

some to have been responsible for the collapse of Maya cities in some parts and perhaps all of

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the lowlands. One argument is that constant warfare would have disrupted trade, and without

trade in exotic display items, subordinate populations would have become disenchanted. In

support of this position proponents could cite the growth in the number and size of Late

Classic cities and towns throughout the lowlands, the increase in carved monuments in the

Late Classic that refer to conflict between sites, and the hastily built, sometimes unfinished,

walls thrown up around the central buildings at a number of sites in Yucatan and Guatemala

in the Terminal Classic. Elite families would have grown as quickly as the rest of the

population, leading to status rivalry and social and political unrest within as well as between

polities.

But this argument, too, is open to question. By far the most massive fortifications

ever built by the Maya date to the Late Preclassic, and evidence of warfare in the Early

Classic is also compelling. Conflict was widespread in some areas in the Terminal Classic,

but it is not clear this indicates a substantial increase in warfare over previous centuries or

that Late Classic warfare was more disruptive than earlier conflict had been. Even if the end

of the Classic was marked by unusual violence, was this the result or symptom of more

serious problems, rather than itself the cause of the collapse?

From the early days of Maya archaeology questions have been raised about the

ability of tropical forest agricultural systems to sustain a complex civilization and high

population levels, and a possible failure of the Late Classic agricultural system in some areas

still remains an issue in discussions of the collapse. As population in the lowlands expanded,

possibly reaching upwards of ten million (compared with about four million on the Yucatan

Peninsula today), so did farming, fueled by several centuries of a relatively moist climate.

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Perhaps this expansion led to deforestation and erosion of fertile topsoil in some areas.

Degradation of the agricultural environment may have increased nutritional stress on

populations, resulting in food shortages, disease, and social unrest.

A problem with these arguments is that although this scenario of spiraling food

shortages is plausible, we have little evidence that the Maya were unable to adequately feed

their expanded numbers. Domesticated crops had spread to parts of the Maya lowlands by

3000 or 2500 B.C., and intensive agricultural practices, including raised and drained fields,

terracing, water management and irrigation, intensive household gardening, arboriculture,

and utilization of especially productive eco-niches go far into the Maya past. Where they

were possible, intensive practices appear to have kept pace with population density, and a

convincing argument can be made that, at least in areas with adequate water and topographic

relief, the Maya produced as much food as they needed. Furthermore, where analysis of

skeletal populations has been done, it seems that nutritional stress and disease burden,

although certainly present, were no greater at the end of the Classic period than they had been

centuries earlier. Recent investigations have also indicated that deforestation and

degradation of productive lands may have been less a problem for the Maya than

archaeologists had speculated.

In sum, we have no solid evidence that agricultural failure would have caused the

Late Classic Maya collapse, had not some other process precipitated it. Whatever caused the

decline, however, archaeologists agree that vastly higher population levels than ever before,

with correspondingly expanded food production needs, are circumstances with which all

explanations must contend.

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The foregoing comments are premised on the conclusion that the Classic Maya

collapse did happen within about a generation in most regions, although stretching out more

than two centuries in the lowlands as a whole. A few scholars maintain, nevertheless, that a

general Maya collapse never occurred and that we should consider the events of these years a

transformation or transition of Maya society, an adaptation to changing realities rather than a

failure. This point of view has some merit, because the Maya did continue to live in all parts

of the peninsula. By the time a few large communities reappeared in limited areas between

1200 and 1400, Classic society had indeed been transformed into something different, albeit

showing strong continuities with earlier Maya culture and society. Postclassic lowland

societies abandoned the institution of divine rulership, and they appear to have been more

closely tied to groups on the Isthmus, in Oaxaca, and in central Mexico through commerce.

In the years between 800 and 1000, however, all the big Classic Maya cities stopped erecting

buildings and carving monuments, and most of them were abandoned. The population of the

lowlands in these years declined as much as 90 percent and remained at about this level for

centuries. Because these dramatic changes occurred everywhere, from Yucatan to Honduras,

the term Acollapse@ is appropriate, despite the eventual vigorous resurgence in the Late

Postclassic.

Late and Terminal Classic Archaeological Sites of the Northern Maya Lowlands

A look at what happened at several lowlands sites at the end of the Classic period,

especially in Yucatan and Campeche, will help fill out the general chronological and regional

patterns of the collapse outlined at the beginning of this chapter.

Starting in south-central Campeche, the great city of Calakmul, home to a population

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of about 50,000 and capital of a kingdom of as much as a million at its peak, carved its last

inscription shortly after 900. The Calakmul hinterland lost about 90 percent of its inhabitants

in the ninth century, but the site itself appears to have declined more slowly. The fall of

Calakmul corresponds roughly in time to that of Tikal, which also had lasted longer than

Maya centers to the east and west.

To the east, sites of the Three Rivers region of northeast Guatemala and northwest

Belize, including La Milpa, Río Azul, Kinal, and La Honradez, also saw their demographic

peaks in the Late Classic. By 850 half the population of the region was gone, and the

centuries between 900 and 1250 saw a decline to 5 percent of the Late Classic figures.

It appears that construction of important buildings may have continued until about

900 at the fortified Río Bec city of Becan, in southern Campeche. Shortly after this the site

and the region were mostly abandoned until recently.

Investigations at several large sites in the Puuc have confirmed that this part of

Yucatan went into decline and was abandoned about the same time, or shortly after, large

inland cities to the south along the central axis of the peninsula, such as Tikal, Calakmul, and

Becan. As in the southern lowlands, however, the nature of the latest occupations varies from

site to site.

Uxmal is the largest Puuc site, covering about 20 km2 of the flattest and most fertile

agricultural land in the Puuc. Inscriptions here suggest to some archaeologists that the latest

important buildings at the site—the Nunnery, the Ballcourt, and the House of the

Governor—were built between 890 and 915, with the last of the three dating to the final ten

or fifteen years of this span during the reign of Lord Chak, the best–known and possibly the

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final ruler of Uxmal. The decline started at this time, although, like several roughly

contemporaneous sites in Yucatan, Uxmal has a number of C-shaped masonry structures,

built by later residents and placed strategically atop earlier platforms near the site center.

C-shaped buildings began during the Terminal Classic, continuing into the Late Postclassic

at Mayapan and sites around Lake Peten Itza, but at Uxmal they probably predate 1000. As at

Chichen Itza, Uxmal architectural sculpture depicts feathered serpents, and it has been

speculated that this shared iconography indicates an alliance between the sites, or even that

Chichen Itza dominated Uxmal, placing Lord Chak on the Uxmal throne. The close

connection of these two sites means that some of the uncertainty about the chronology of

Chichen Itza, referred to below, has rubbed off on Uxmal, prompting a few to say Uxmal

remained a powerful city perhaps 50 or 100 years longer than I suggest here. At the moment,

the most likely scenario is that all monumental construction at Uxmal ended shortly after 900

and that population decline began at that time, followed by a modest reoccupation by

families who built the C-shaped structures.

Several other Puuc sites show an end to building programs about the same time as

Uxmal, by 900 or shortly thereafter, with a population decline that left them decimated or

abandoned by 950. These include Oxkintok, at the northwest corner of the Puuc, once one of

the most powerful cities in northwest Yucatan; Kabah, the second-largest Puuc city,

connected to Uxmal by an 18-km-long raised causeway; Sayil; Labna; and Xkipche. All five

sites have seen extensive archaeological investigations. All of these cities and towns except

Labna show evidence of a residual occupation near the site center after 950 or of a possible

minimal reoccupation after a time of abandonment. C-shaped structures at Sayil and Xkipche

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testify to this post-collapse occupation.

Chichen Itza, the largest prehispanic Maya city in Yucatan, is also the most

perplexing, in part because it seems to have remained a powerful force throughout much of

the northern Maya area after most or all other cities had fallen, continuing to build massive

public and religious structures and dominating commerce over a large region and collecting

tribute from an undefined but clearly extensive zone. It is the only prehispanic polity or state

in the north that some archaeologists consider an empire. The archaeological sequence at

Chichen Itza has traditionally been divided into an early AMaya@ period, during which the

architectural styles were similar to those at Puuc sites, as in the Monjas group, and a later

AToltec@ period, which continued similar masonry techniques but introduced new building

types, as well as styles and sculptural elements that are also found about this time in Central

Mexico and other regions of Mesoamerica. The latest major buildings are those on the Great

Terrace (Gran Nivelación), and the group of the High Priest=s Tomb (the Osario), with a

sculptured panel dated to 998. Several constructions on the Great Terrace, including the

Ballcourt and the Temple of the Warriors and some of its neighboring structures, are as late

as the Osario and possibly later. The structural and stylistic sequence of architecture at

Chichen Itza, therefore, indicates continued building until at least 1000. The defensive wall

around the Great Terrace, like late fortifications at other Maya lowland sites, postdates the

buildings inside it, and the wall may mark the collapse of Chichén Itzá sometime after 1050.

These estimates for the fall of Chichen Itza are probably near the mainstream opinion

today. Recent estimates have ranged from a collapse before 1000 to a decline as late as 1200.

If 1025 or 1050 was the approximate date of the decline of Chichen Itza, then this site

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must have lasted about a century longer than the Puuc sites and most other cities in Yucatan.

It is conceivable, in the absence of firm chronological control at Chichen Itza after 1000, that

the site remained a viable community after 1050. Isla Cerritos, the port of Chichen Itza on the

north coast of Yucatan, produced four radiocarbon dates in deposits with late Chichen

Itza–style ceramics. The calibrated ranges of these samples indicate the pottery dates to

1000-1150. If the dates are accurate, it would seem Chichen Itza=s port remained active at a

time when we have no solid evidence that the site=s rulers were commissioning new

buildings. At Balankanche Cave, a few kilometers from the center of Chichen Itza, four

radiocarbon samples associated with a ritual complex of Central Mexican-style Tlaloc

censers indicate a range in calibrated years of about 850 to 1100.

The site of Yaxuna, about 20 km southeast of Chichen Itza, seems to have fallen

victim by 900 to the expansion of its more powerful neighbor, Chichen Itza. Construction at

Yaxuna continued after 800, but the last major building, Structure 6F-3, was not completed,

a defensive wall was built around the North Acropolis before 900, and the excavators believe

the city fell to a siege about this time. Although an attack by Chichen Itza is a reasonable

hypothesis, the evidence is circumstantial.

Coba, in Quintana Roo, was comparable in size to Tikal, Calakmul, and Chichen Itza.

Closely linked to the southern Maya lowlands early in the Classic period, it became

increasingly involved with sites in Yucatan, and in the Late Classic was connected to Yaxuna

by a 100-km causeway. Its latest inscribed date is 780, but it is not clear how soon after this

Coba began its decline. Although by 900 it had probably collapsed, no direct evidence ties its

decline to the fortunes of Chichen Itza, far to the west.

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Ek Balam rivaled Chichen Itza, about 50 km to the southeast, for most of its Classic

history. Contact between the two sites appears to have been sufficiently limited that ceramic

and other crossties are difficult to determine, as is the timing of the political and

demographic collapse of Ek Balam. Structure GT-1, by far the largest at the site and one of

the largest palaces in Mesoamerica, probably dates to the middle or late ninth century. The

final Classic-period ceramic complex may extend as late as 1050, although the excavators of

Ek Balam think that this city succumbed to the growing influence of Chichen Itza, if not

necessarily its military might, well before this date. As at Uxmal, C-shaped buildings were

placed on earlier Classic platforms. The apparent independence of Ek Balam from the

Chichen Itza state during much of its history gives us a view of the limitations of Chichen

Itza=s early power, but Ek Balam=s eventual decline may reflect a huge shift in the power

structure of the northern Maya area after about 900.

Dzibilchaltun, about halfway between Merida and the Gulf coast, is a final and

somewhat different example of a Yucatan site at the end of the Classic period. Dzibilchaltun

reached a population of about 30,000 to 40,000 and a maximum extent of about 16 km2 at the

end of the Classic, probably sometime between 900 and 950, after which the city declined

rapidly. Unlike many settlements in northern Yucatan, however, it seems never to have been

abandoned, and several buildings were erected that contained ceramics similar to those of

Chichen Itza. Recent excavations have shown that a major pyramidal platform on the central

plaza, Structure 36, was built during this time, suggesting that Chichen Itza established a

presence at Dzibilchaltun, probably to control the northwest sector of the peninsula from the

interior. Whether the decline of this Classic city was related to the imperialistic expansion of

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Chichen Itza or other causes, or both, is unknown.

By 1050 or 1100 the tribute state at Chichen Itza had collapsed, along with any

communities in northern Yucatan, such as Dzibilchaltun, that it had conquered or had

enlisted as allies. Depopulation was often not as extensive in Yucatan as it had been slightly

earlier in the southern lowlands, but the cities were gone, never to reappear. For the next

century or century and a half we know relatively little about the northern Maya and even less

about the Maya of Guatemala. Small groups lived in the decaying downtown sections of the

old towns, using artifacts and pottery that can be distinguished from those of earlier times,

but for many years the Maya established no large new communities. Only in one region of

the Maya lowlands, the east coast of Quintana Roo, did a few Maya towns remain

continuously occupied, with new buildings erected throughout the Postclassic period.

The only large Postclassic city in Yucatan was Mayapan, about 100 km west of

Chichen Itza, of which it was a crude copy. Founded before 1200 and lasting until about

1450, it was governed by a confederacy of the ruling families of several provinces of

Yucatan. Populations in various parts of the lowlands increased after 1200, but by far the

most densely inhabited area was the east coast of Quintana Roo, where many large and small

towns were occupied when the Spaniards arrived.

Evidence for a Terminal Classic Drought

Although the possibility of a drought as a factor in the collapse was raised long ago, it

was not until the early l980s that some Maya archaeologists reported evidence that suggested

that the climate had not been stable during the past several thousand years and that periods of

relative moisture alternated with times of severe desiccation. Historical records from the

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Spanish arrival to modern times mention several periods of devastating drought, further

raising the likelihood of similar patterns in preceding centuries. This intriguing but

inconclusive correspondence between archaeological and environmental data led to

chemical analyses of lake and ocean sediment cores in the 1990s. These studies, by

geologists, chemists, and other marine, climate, and environmental scientists, provided

direct evidence that the Classic Maya collapse occurred during a span of intermittently

reduced rainfall. We now know that this drought extended beyond the Maya area to other

regions of Mesoamerica and that long and severe dry spells occurred at the same time and

same latitudes in Africa and China. Fluctuations in the intensity of the drought over almost

300 years can be linked to the times of political disruption in different parts of the Maya

lowlands.

The most reliable evidence of Holocene climatic fluctuations in the Maya lowlands

comes from sediment cores extracted between 1993 and 2004 from Lake Chichancanab,

about 80 km south of Chichen Itza, and from lakes at Punta Laguna, just north of Coba, in

Quintana Roo. Both lake systems lack exterior drainage, so that the main water loss is

through evaporation, making them ideal for paleoclimatic studies, and their deposits have

been disturbed little or not at all by humans. Droughts have been inferred in the Lake

Chichancanab core sediments by mineralogy (gypsum deposition) and stable oxygen

isotopes (18O), and in the Punta Laguna sediments by oxygen isotopes (18O and 13O),

deposits of organic matter, and carbonate content.

The results of the Lake Chichancanab and Punta Laguna analyses are similar, despite

the use of different proxies for drought intervals. A summary in 2007 of the lowland Maya

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Terminal Classic Drought by the scientists who have worked at these two lake systems

describes it as a series of droughts separated by periods of relatively moister conditions. The

first dry event began about 760 and lasted until 870 or 890. This span showed one drought

peak about 760 or 770 and a second about 850 or 860. The fifty years centered on 900 or 910

were relatively moister. The last dry event began at 950 or 960 and lasted until about 1050 at

Punta Laguna or 1100 at Lake Chichancanab.

Both lake systems showed two earlier drought periods in Maya prehistory. One ran

from about 150 to 250, corresponding to the abandonment of many Maya lowland sites at the

end of the Preclassic period, and the other drought corresponded roughly to what is called the

Hiatus near the end of the Early Classic period (534-593).

The Cariaco Basin, off the north coast of Venezuela, contains annually laminated

sediments from rivers. Like the Yucatan Peninsula lakes, it is ideal for gauging past climatic

conditions, because it is self-contained, anoxic, and not disturbed by burrowing animals.

Although it is south of the Yucatan Peninsula, its dry- and wet-season rainfall patterns are

similar, and paleoclimatic reconstructions should be the same for both regions. The relative

amounts of titanium in drill cores was used as a measure of river sediment delivery and hence

amount of rainfall. The annual layers showed Terminal Classic droughts beginning at about

760 (5 years long), 810 (9 years), 860 (3 years), and 910 (6 years), as well as a drought at the

end of the Preclassic period.

The Yucatan Peninsula lakes and the Cariaco Basin showed a drought spacing of

about 50 years recurring in cycles of 208 or 213 years. The reason for this spacing is

unknown, but it may reflect cycles of increased solar activity.

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The Pacific lowlands of Guatemala and Chiapas suffered droughts similar to those of

the lowlands to the north. Coastal mangrove swamp cores near the Guatemala-Mexico

border suggest a dry period at the end of the Preclassic and a far longer dry and variable

interval from 700 to 1480, determined by analysis of pollen grains, phytoliths, and organic

carbon and calcium carbonate percentages. The most striking difference between these 2005

results and those noted above is that the Pacific coastal drought lasted through most of the

Postclassic period, instead of ending before 1100.

A report of a similar Terminal Classic drought in central Mexico was published in

2011. A bald-cypress tree-ring chronology from Amealco, 60 km from Tula, in Queretaro,

using 74 cores from 30 trees, has created a continuous annual chronology from 771 to

2008.The sequence shows droughts centered at 810 and 860, the same years as those

identified in the Yucatan Peninsula lakes and the Cariaco Basin, and a third, longer and more

severe, from 897-922, a span identified as a relatively moister period between two long

droughts in the northern Maya lowlands. The Amealco chronology pinpoints an even drier

event from 1149 to 1167, which is interpreted as an extension into central Mexico of the most

extreme drought of the past 1000 years in western North America. Tula is thought to have

collapsed about the time this drought began. A final prehispanic dry period bracketed the

Spanish conquest of central Mexico.

Farther afield, severe droughts have been documented in the semi-arid Sahel of

Africa (ca. 800-1000) and on the coast of southeast China (ca. 750-900).

What can we conclude from the above summary? Perhaps most important, little

doubt remains that a major drought occurred between about 760 and 1050 or a bit later at

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about the latitude of the Yucatan Peninsula, throughout Mesoamerica and in other world

areas. The evidence comes from layered sediments in lakes, ocean basins, and mangrove

swamps, and from many methods of analysis and various proxies, including gypsum,

titanium, stable oxygen isotopes, pollen, phytoliths, cave deposits, speleothems, carbonate

and organic deposits, and tree rings. All these sources and proxies return remarkably

consistent results. The duration of this Terminal Classic drought was 250B300 years, and like

climatic fluctuations of greater length in the Pleistocene and Cenozoic, it comprised

alternating dry and moister (or cooler and warmer) intervals.

The Maya area is large and heterogeneous, and the duration and strength of these

intervals varied from one region to the next. One example of this variation mentioned above

is the reappearance of moister weather at Punta Laguna, Quintana Roo, by about 1050, in

contrast to the continuation of severe drought at Lake Chichancanab until 1100. A more

striking difference is the end of the Terminal Classic drought in the Maya lowlands by 1050

or 1100, in contrast to the continuation of strong drought on the nearby Pacific coast to nearly

1500. At a greater distance, the new central Mexican tree-ring chronology mimics some of

the northern Maya drought dates, but the deep central Mexican drought that occurred about

the time Tula collapsed appears to have corresponded, in stark contrast, to a moister interval

in the Maya lowlands. Correspondences and differences in neighboring regions must be

determined, not assumed.

An additional problem is that the chronology of all the sampled deposits depends on

radiocarbon dating, which is subject to a range of error. The analytical error created by the

AMS dating that is used on tiny pieces of charcoal in sediment columns is small, but it may

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be 100 years when dates are calibrated to calendar years if the calibration curve in that

interval is flat, as it is in three spans during the Terminal Classic.

The Classic Collapse and Its Relationship to the Terminal Classic Drought

In accepting recent evidence that the Terminal Classic and the early years of the

Postclassic, when nearly all lowland Maya sites were abandoned, were a time of variable but

often severe drought, I conclude that this long drying event and the collapse were causally

related. Higher population densities than ever before or after in the Maya area almost

certainly exacerbated growing social stress as water shortages continued, but nothing

indicates that Maya systems of intensive cultivation were incapable of feeding these

numbers, given adequate rainfall. Deforestation and environmental degradation may have

been problems, but recent evidence suggests that around some sites they were not. Nearly

three thousand years of farming in the lowlands had taught the Maya to manage the natural

resources on which they depended. As food and water shortages affected cities and whole

regions, struggles over remaining resources surely escalated, but local and regional conflicts

were symptoms of deeper environmental problems.

An argument sometimes raised against a drought being an important factor in the

collapse is that social decline and abandonment did not happen all at once but rather began

about 760 along the Usumacinta and then occurred around 810 in the southeast, 890 in the

north-central Peten, 930 or 950 in the Puuc, and perhaps as late as 1050 at Chichen Itza, a

span of nearly 300 years. But chemical, pollen, and tree-ring sequences from many

independent sources now show that precisely those years, from 760 to 1050 or 1100, bracket

the Terminal Classic Drought. Because different regions were affected with differing

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severity at different times, and because years of extreme aridity were buffered by moister

intervals, the archaeologically visible pattern of collapse and abandonment is what we would

expect, far from constituting evidence that drought was unimportant.

Skeptics also ask why the great cities of the southern lowlands were abandoned a

century before sites in Yucatan collapsed. One answer is that many were not. Several sites in

the center of the peninsula, such as Tikal, Calakmul, and La Muñeca, continued erecting

monuments and buildings until 870, 890, or later, and construction of major buildings at

Puuc sites in Yucatan did not continue after about 910 or 920. This is a difference of little

more than a human generation. By about 950 the population of nearly all northern sites had

declined precipitously. Depopulation in the southern lowlands did precede this, but not by

many years. The Classic collapse, then, was one long process, not a southern event followed

by an unrelated northern collapse.

The process did start in the south, and sites in Yucatan did last somewhat longer, but

the reasons are not certain. A likely explanation is that rainfall patterns changed first in the

south, but this cannot be proved with available evidence. Except near rivers, water is more

difficult to access in the southern lowlands, because the water table is far beyond the reach of

primitive stone tools. If aguadas, reservoirs, and seasonal swamps dry up, large populations

are at risk.

This human reliance on surface water catchment is also true of the Puuc Hills, where

the Maya had no rivers, although deep caves and large artificial cisterns (chultuns) provided

water during the annual dry season and short-lived dry spells. Recent investigations at the

Puuc site of Kiuic show that the site was abandoned during the Terminal Classic, at about the

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same time as other Puuc sites, but here meticulous excavations indicate that the occupants

left many of their possessions where they were, intending to return when conditions

improved. They never did. Kiuic shows no traces of violence, and a deepening drought and a

desperate population are likely causes of the abrupt disappearance.

We return to a difficult issue in understanding the northern Maya Terminal

Classic—the florescence and delayed collapse of Chichen Itza, a site unlike any other in

Mesoamerica. Construction of important buildings continued into the tenth century on the

Great Terrace and elsewhere, well after the end of major projects at Uxmal and other Puuc

sites. The latest inscribed date at Chichen Itza is 998 on the High Priest=s Tomb, and it seems

unlikely that large buildings were built much after this date. By 1050 or 1100 the power of

the Chichen Itza state and the population of the site had probably declined. Some of its allies

probably continued this late as well, although no communities in Yucatan rivaled it in size or

importance. We do not know how Chichen Itza maintained its power and size after its peers

declined. It may be that local differences in drought conditions, combined with long

experience in managing scarce water supplies, helped it prosper when others were failing,

but this is speculation. The polity without doubt controlled extensive trade networks and

commanded tribute from a wide area, and this may have allowed the site to survive in the

face of stress, both natural and manmade, that proved intolerable for old and powerful

competitors like Ek Balam and Uxmal.

Just over a decade ago one Maya archaeologist lamented loudly the publication of a

new book that argued for the importance of drought in the Maya collapse, crying that it

marked a return to late nineteenth-century environmental determinism. Since the 2000

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publication of The Great Maya Droughts: Water, Life, and Death, by Richardson B. Gill, a

great deal of scientific information has been published that supports this view. Much of it is

summarized in the preceding pages. But although climatic fluctuations did indeed influence

the course of Maya history and culture, the existence of the drought, as well as the enormous

problems it posed for the Maya, is not what is most interesting. What is intriguing to the

anthropologist and historian is how Maya communities coped internally and how they dealt

with the larger political and social world around them in the face of what eventually became

insurmountable difficulties. Investigating the dynamics of these changing relationships

poses a challenge to Maya archaeologists in the years to come.