Solving the Mystery of the Lost Maya
Assignment to hand in: Hypothesizing About the Mystery of the Maya Collapse
Step 1: Introduction: Read the following text and look at the picture below:
Between roughly 800 and 900 C.E., the civic core of nearly every southern Maya city was completely abandoned. Building ceased, and the last stone inscriptions at each site record nothing of apparent relevance to the disaster. Archeological evidence indicates that, in the space of less than 100 years, the vast population of these many cities left their comfortable homes and magnificent temples. Many appear to have migrated northward into Yucatan, and perhaps some into Highland Guatemala. Simple peasant life continued on a reduced scale in the lowland jungle cities and neighboring villages, but ultimately everyone left. The rain forest engulfed the abandoned cities, and the great Maya heartland would wait a thousand years before explorers and settlers conquered it again. Archaeologists have proposed several theories for the Classic Maya Collapse, but the reasons for the collapse largely remain a mystery.
Copan Stela I
Most of Maya writing dates from the Classic Period (about C.E. 300 - 900), traditionally defined as the period covering the era of dated stone inscriptions. Maya writing consists of block like heiroglyphs, or symbols, consisting of individual glyphic elements gathered into compounds. Individual elements of glyphs sometimes clearly depict animals, plants, and other objects of the Maya world; others are largely symbolic, and what they were meant to depict is not always known. Steady advances in decipherment since the late 1800s have given us the ability to read much of what the Maya wrote. Most Classic Maya incriptions, such as the one shown here, appear to be statements about rulers and their accomplishments. By identifying the dates of inscriptions - and then calculating the equivalent Western calendar date - Mayanists have discovered when each site collapsed: the date of a site's last incription tells us approximately when the Maya abandonded the site.
Step 2: Hypothesizing Reasons for Maya Collapse: Complete the Hypothesizing About the Mystery of the Maya Collapse Student Handout by circling the location on the inset map, listen to the corresponding audio track, highlight important information, and answer the Critical Thinking Question for each location.
Tikal
Tikal - Guatemala
Copan
Copan, West Court - Honduras
Palenque
Palenque - Mexico
Reference Help:
Map of Classic Maya World
Summary of Collapse Theories
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