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This temple in the Kingdom of Tikal is one of the most prominent of the Classic Maya Period.
Scientists have long assumed that the Classic Maya civilization was done in more than a millennium ago by a series of droughts, but now they say natural records suggest those droughts were "modest," with no more than a 40 percent reduction in rainfall. And that, in turn, suggests that similarly modest climate changes over the next century could have a not-so-modest effect.
"What seems like a minor reduction in water availability may lead to important, long-lasting problems ... Today, we have the benefit of awareness, and we should act accordingly," Martin Medina-Elizalde, a researcher at the Yucatan Center for Scientific Research in Mexico, said in a news release.
The study — conducted by Medina-Elizalde and Eelco Rohling, a colleague from the University of Southampton — appears in this week's issue of the journal Science. It addresses one of the big mysteries of Maya history: What caused a civilization that dominated areas of present-day Guatemala and Mexico in the year 800 to collapse by the year 1000? Deforestation and drought have figured prominently as the prime suspects, but just how dire did those droughts get?
To shed additional light on the mystery, the two climate experts analyzed chemicals in lake sediments, marine shells and cave stalagmites to track variations in rainfall. For example, the ratio of oxygen-16 to oxygen-18 in a particular layer of mineral can tell you how much rainfall fell during the season when the mineral was laid down. Such variations can be read year by year, like tree rings.
Science / AAAS
The elements in different layers of stalagmites in Yucatan Peninsula caves, such as this one, were analyzed to determine how rainfall varied through the centuries.
The researchers found that there was indeed a deficit in rainfall in the period between the years 800 and 1000. But that deficit was modest, amounting to a 25 to 40 percent reduction in the drought years. Medina-Elizalde and Rohling assume that the droughts took the form of reductions in the frequency and intensity of tropical storms during the summer.
"Summer was the main season for cultivation and replenishment of Mayan freshwater storage systems, and there are no rivers in the Yucatan lowlands," Rohling said in the news release. "Societal disruptions and abandonment of cities are likely consequences of critical water shortages, especially because there seems to have been a rapid repetition of multiyear droughts."
In an email, Medina-Elizalde told me that "these droughts may not have been strong enough to cause by themselves the collapse of the civilization, but they were likely strong enough and persistent enough ... to cause major sociopolitical disruptions that ultimately led to the final outcome."
"Let's imagine that today, from one year to another, major cities can no longer supply fresh water to a third of their populations. ... With no freshwater pumping systems, how would we keep producing agricultural produce and supplying fresh water to support the entire populations of these cities?" he wrote.
Today, much of the Yucatan Peninsula's rural population still relies on summer rainfall to support their crops. Medina-Elizalde said access to fresh water isn't so much of a problem, thanks to modern pumping systems. But he noted that lower-than-average summer rains still "have fairly dire consequences" for local farmers.
The current models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict that there could be annual rainfall reductions of up to 50 percent in the Yucatan Peninsula by the end of this century, Medina-Elizalde said. He and his colleagues are studying how such reductions might affect freshwater supplies in the region.
"Some climate models suggest that local vegetation does contribute to increase rainfall significantly ... which would suggest that by preserving the forests, we are mitigating the impacts of climate change," he said. "Definitely, local governments need to start making serious efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change in light of the forecast for the next decades."
What do you think? Does this research merely add an interesting twist on a centuries-old story, or does it serve as a warning about our future fate? Please feel free to weigh in with your comments below.
More about climate and ancient civilizations:
- How climate change kills societies
- Ancient city survived as civilizations collapsed
- Mystery behind Khmer civilization's ruin revealed
- Will climate change change us?
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or following the Cosmic Log Google+ page. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Collapse can be caused by a cascade of events beginning with rapid growth of population groups that slash and burn to make crop land that in turn is taken from rain forest known for its inherent weakness and which once depleted forces the burgeoning population to compete with other groups. If the scientists are accurate warfare took over followed by savagery which certainly doesn't help grow crops. In the end the voluntary service to maintain the Mayans cities likely collapsed and then devolved into further anarchy. Whatever the cause it appears that the North American Southwest also experienced change sufficient to cause the disappearance of the Anaszi (sic) cliff dweller cultures at the same time.
Indeed
At least in today's day-and-age, we've got A LOT of redundancy. It would require a world-wide catastrophy to force all of society into the dark ages like it used to happen only ~2,000 years ago.
Now we can have massive earthquakes in Haiti, horrible droughts and famine in E. Africa, Haboobs in Arizona...and civilization continues to flourish
Now if we get struck by a meteor or something happens to our ability to support the many billions of hungry mouths in our growing population...THAT's when the fit will hit the shan
You are wrong. Populations do not flourish. The drought in Somalia has almost wiped out a whole generation of Somali children. Some simple search engine research will help to correct your assessment. Also look at the link that I put in my post below. The forecast for droughts in the U.S. are not good, and show an increase in severity.
I'm glad someone mentioned the Anasazi as well. The Tuzigoot of the Sedona area were part of the same sub culture if I remember correctly and disappeared about 1400 years ago too due to similar conditions.
The agrarian economy of the San Joaquin valley in California is heavily dependant upon stored rainwater used for irrigation. During wet years like last winter, typically when an El Nino pattern is in effect in the Pacific, there's plenty of water for all the farmers, for domestic usage, and even for the fish. In dry years, like this one, the second driest on record so far, linked to the La Nina pattern we barely scrape by. There's lots of squabbling about who should sacrifice. Usually these patterns alternate with regularity and we get on with it.
Now then, if, for some reason, a long term La Nina pattern took hold in the Pacific and we had virtually no rain for ten years... well, how can I put this? We'd be f--ked. Ain't no reservoir anywhere that's holding a ten year supply of water.
Maybe the equivalent of mayan scientist's back in their day concluded it takes X amount of time for human beings to become stupid, depraved, selfish and backwards enough to bring about their near extinction every so often. Maybe the "Doom" part is on the off-chance they don't somehow survive long enough to claim they're god's children again :P
Wait, how the ___— is this possible, with NO CO2-producing cars or industries, and no Algore or Bozobama to whine about it? You mean the earth's climate just NATURALLY cycles? Who Woulda thunk it?
Kraussk
One thing you may have missed is that the Maya used a slash and burn technique for farming. As their population grew they expanded and slashed more forest. Constantly moving and slashing. Then not allowing the forest to regenerate.
Note further down in the article where they discuss the fact that even now, the deforestation may be causing the same type of change.
It's not just greenhouse gases. Deforestation is a huge concern.
Obviously, You didn't read the article. Deforestation, lack of rainfall, smoke and emissions from over population to name a few.
But then, as both George Bush and Sarah Palin have each decreed there is no such thing as global warming, and climate change is not brought about by mankind's activities on the earth, you obviously must be correct
The problems that could lead to a modern collapse of society are far greater and more complex. The biggest commodity that could disrupt world civilization as we know it is energy. In particular, the civilized world is completely dependent on petroleum.
How did the food in your pantry get there? A farmer in the midwest sprayed some petrochemicals onto the ground to fertilize the depleted soil in order to grow nutrient deficient corn. This corn was then harvested with fuel fed machines and transported to a factory where it was processed into the various products that make up our food, or shipped to a farm where it was used to feed lifestock, that then were processed into meat. Those end products were wrapped in a plastic wrapper and shipped via a diesel truck to your local grocery store. You drove down there in your car made from and fueled by petroleum to buy it and bring it home.
How did you get to work this morning? Where did the medicine you took this morning come from? The shampoo you used in the shower? The synthetic fiber clothing you are wearing now?
The answer: Petroleum.
The problem: The reason this planet can currently support 7 billion people (sort of) is because of petroleum. But, world petroleum production is flattening out or declining. The petroluem being extracted now is more expensive and harder to refine. As world population is growing exponentially, demand for petroleum will increase exponentially. Also, placed in the third world that never used petroleum before are starting to in a big way. So, demand will continue to go UP UP UP.
Result: Large populations will starve to death or die in resource wars.
By increasing evaporation of water from land more clouds can be formed thus leading to more rain. Vegetation does that, as well as creation of water reservoirs wherever possible. Even sea water can be pumped to the desert to make artificial lakes greatly affecting desert climate. Ultimately it is all about the money: the technology is there, the know how is there - we just need to spend the money on the environment instead of spending it on wars. Very simple.
The drop in rainfall caused the Mayan colony on Earth to fail and they returned to their home world. Duh!
Completely untrue!, We all know that Mayans returend to their home planet! (Skip is completely right). This article was written by Al Gore so he can make more millions frightening us and was supported by the hundreds of earth scientists that have conspired to create the climate change hoax! (Sarc)
Here we go again, The Mayans were not that smart or they would still be here. Even the Africans had entered the Iron age before the Mayans existed. They were just a stone age civilization with pagan gods and human sacrifice. They do not hold any kind of key to our future. People who believe that they do should not breed for the good of mankind.
My theory,
The Mayans were a weird bunch, very advanced in math and astronomy but, they also revered "pagan gods" and anxiously awaited there promised returns (lots of evidence of that). Is it possible, while mathematically unveiling/predicting the end of mankind, they also mathematically calculated their own day of reckoning, and upon arrival of that day, and the subsequent no-show of their now "unreliable pagan god" , took their "game ball" and went elsewhere??!!
The Mayans returned to their home world to resupply and are scheduled to return to Earth in December of 2012. Now according to their time-line they've only been gone a few months but in Earth-time it's been over a thousand years. I, for one, welcome our new Mayan over-lords. They can't be anyworse that the Republicans. :-)
It's complicated but many Native Americans in the southwest believe the Anazazi disappeared because they started mocking and started disbelieving in their own religion because they thought they would be able to survive without a God, as a result they were wiped out by drought cuz by the wind, lightning and fire, just like Soddam and Gamorrah in the Bible. This is a lesson for all humanity. The reason why scientist can't pin-point a reason for their disappearance is because it was done externally from above. Someone ask Sylvia Browne.
They chopped down the forest to harvest the mushrooms growing out of the decaying wood...
The author has one major error in his hypothetical example. A 33% shortfall in water supply does not lead to 33% of the population being without water. It leads to 100% of the population being without water for 4 months! A much more significant disruption of society is the result!
That depends - is the drought a long period of no rain or a long period of occasional precipitation that amounts to less than usual (and less than the population needs)? I think it more likely the latter and the elite (the 1% ?) would probably have control of the water collected.
So, are we then doomed to follow in their footsteps?...
▲is building his pyramid right now
This is another example of politics overwhelming science. It's the reason that people no longer "believe" the global warming zealots.
Exactly how does politics figure into this specific article? Did you read it?
dsb - must have missed the birth control topic prominently raised in the picture, the political polls missed the fertile details. Anthropologists always often look for evidence of symbol or sign indicating a language hoping to communicate at some basic level recognizable, to those may want review their research. It seems easy to forget that life and nature go to extreme lengths to enable species to reproduce, and never excludes any possibility, also it not contradictory to also point out that mother nature also goes to extreme lengths to preserve and not change what already works. The primitive design of related reproduction apparatus is recognizable even if extreme variations are always found.
The primate family and specifically the human branch has developed larger brains to compensate for inbreeding bottlenecks caused by geological processes including volcanic events and multiple ices ages. The results is relative physically weak, inadequately protected species that has to support the long growth period needed for the brain to develop, be educated and to participate in social groups dedicated to obtaining food and shelter, to spread around the world and to harness agriculture, engineering, energy consuming machines and devices and to extract vast materials and energy stored in the earth. Politics is basically the penultimate inbreeding that results from the brain thinking that it only needs other brain to survive. Politics forces Mother Nature to compensate by impairing brains from thinking about real evolutionary details and to short cut the processes by making sure that primal forces depicted in symbolic form are employed. In effect politics reduces the need for excess brains, brains that do not reproduce, in exchange for reproduction at the most primal level. This totally explains how human development is limited, unfortunately it is the brain that was developed to allow the brain to be limited.
What a bunch of mumbo-jumbo!!!
Very good. Take a popular subject - Maya and 2012 - and then spin it into a global warming lesson to help the pounding of this subject into the heads of billions of people who are naive enough to believe what they read in the news.
Someday, when government is in your homes and knocking down your bedroom door, ransacking your cupboard shelves and dinner table, this will be clear.
Arx, you obviously have a open mind about the subject.
This is a really interesting article. Just last week, I was writing a paper about the drought in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethopia and the geo-political circumstances that is compounding the bad situation. An entire generation of Somalian children have been wiped out because of the drought, hunger, and malnourishment. I looked up a global drought monitor, and it was really surprising. You can click on forecasts for 9, 12, and 18 months. The U.S., South America, and Europe forecasts are not good.
http://drought.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/drought.html?map=%2Fwww%2Fdrought%2Fweb_pages%2Fdrought.map&program=%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmapserv&root=%2Fwww%2Fdrought2%2F&map_web_imagepath=%2Ftmp%2F&map_web_imageurl=%2Ftmp%2F&map_web_template=%2Fdrought.html
It shows a lot of moderate droughts as mentioned in this piece as well as severe droughts that can wipe out or reduce the population significantly. This is real stuff, not just the politicizing of global warming. I haven't bought into the whole Al Gore version of global warming, but I do believe that as a scientific description it does happen. Combine droughts with fire, and you significantly impact the world's food supply as farming and ranching take a hit.
I think now is a good time to start preparing some food storage. Remember the story of the grasshopper and the ant. Are you a grasshopper or an ant?
You might also give credit to unending civil wars in the regions you mentioned that exasperate a bad situation, slash and burn farming devastates the country yielding ever decreasing crop production. Drought brought on by the devastation of entire eco system. so its not all climate based
g
You are very right. They have been fighting wars in Somalia for over twenty years. How this ties into the above article is that it helped to further the dissolution of their civilization. We are seeing the manifestation of the theory postulated in this piece in real time. However, not many people are making the connections.
Another real reason why children are dying in Somalia is that the wars are linked to Al-Qaida and the worldwide jihadist movement. These groups will not accept foreign aid from Western countries. The U.N. and organizations like Feed the Children and the Red Cross actually work to get these people to accept aid for their people with little success. They would rather see their people starve off or flee to refugee camps in Kenya than accept life-saving help from Western nations.
Somali clan/tribal leaders are more open to accepting Western help, and some have been actually brokering their own deals with aid agencies for relief and aid. Some clan/tribal leaders and have also threatened a revolt against the top leaders in order to save their families. There is a threat that the wars in Somalia will have two fronts - one with the recognized government and the other with the rebelling factions. This again ties into the argument of the article - the dissolution of the fabric and order of their country through worsening conditions due to drought and geo-political conflict.
It wasn't just the Mayans who sacrificed human beings to protect the power of the wealthy.
Here in Philadelphia, two people committed suicide after losing their homes to foreclosure. Data from the US Center for Disease Control indicate that US suicides increased from 33,300 in 2006 to 35,547 in 2009 and that the rate increased from 11.15 per 100,000 people to 11.9.
Plus, millions of Americans will die years before their time from the stresses of this second Depression – and from the lack of medical care resulting from deep government budget cuts. Overall, Wall Street corruption has probably killed more Americans than al-Qaeda-- and that corruption is defended by many of the same people who claim global warming is "fiction". I suppose that a million square miles of Arctic ice cap melting (as shown by spy satellite photos taken in the 1960s) is fiction also.
Only a 25% reduction and that happened?
Will get interresting when that happens with our exploding population world wide. Going from 6 billion to 10 billion by 2050. Like I said it will get interresting, thankfully I will not be around by that time
I have been saying it for years that the day will come people will give away their first born for water.
And we are suppose to be intelligent? LMAOF, we don't deserve better.
That's exactly how I feel. You can't claim to be intelligent and then do everything possible to help the people that need it the least. When I was younger, I thought my generation would be able to make the world a better place by helping people rise out of poverty. Boy was I naive!
It's in our inherent nature to be greedy; it's a survival tool. In the past people had to fight for resources to stay alive. This greed will be good in the future when millions of people die due to dwindling resources and loss of land due to the coming ice age. We have removed ourselves from any type of ecosystem. I can see this as plain as the nose on my face. Why can't other people?
In my dreams I'm usually in a house that's kind of like ones I've lived in, but weird... or a car that's kind of like mine, but the thing won't work right, and then it changes into a toy that I have to steer up around the bend without even being able to see it, and I just know it's gonna crash!!
A lot of times I have to go to the bathroom in the dream, you gotta watch that in case it's really happening
Really Zack?
Well we could cut Liberals hearts out with obsidian knives too...Mayan did it so can we.
or the foul hearts of Reactionaries, just sayin ...
"American General: Your background is fairly liberal, isn't it, Mr Blair?
800 AD. Is that when the SUVs started all this global warming?
For 200 years they ate, slept, got up in the morning, ate slept, got up in the morning etc. They did something else which caused a Malthusian condition of resources unable to support the population growth no matter how plentiful the rainfall. Along comes a Mayan Hitler who charismatically talks of lebensraum and leads them out of the area to who knows where.
I hope none of you people are one of my neighbors. Odd comments.
The GMO poisoned food and the chemicals in the air, water and food from the chemtrails will kill us off before we die of natural causes.
Just wait and see the scientists will create and release a phantom diseae that will be highly contagious and than use your imagination.
The world is over populated according to some people.
Monsanto is adding agent orange to the food this year. Be careful of what you eat.
Jeffery
Those chemtrails have been happening since aircraft have been flying in the cold atmosphere in WWII. It is nothing but water vapor. Do some research.
I only eat frozen lasagna and cheesewhoppers. And Cheerios.
There is what looks like a minature sun circling the sun with a trail of molten fire that fades out like a comet as it is circling the sun.
You should see it. It is one of the coolest things that I have ever seen in my life.
It is really hard to look at the sun these days due to the light from the sun being refractured from the nano particles of aluminum in our atmosphere from the chemtrails. Looking at the sun is like looking at the sun reflecting off a chrome bumper on a car.
How can you make a comparison when they had no rivers, so of course they would suffer more during a drought
Just like the Anasazi, they probably fought over an ever decreasing resource. The Anazasi had plenty of water along the Colorado. It was warfare over just a few prime crop growing spots that destroyed them
Re: "...they had no rivers,"
Chichen Itza is located in the eastern portion of Yucatán state in Mexico.[9] The northern Yucatán Peninsula is arid, and the rivers in the interior all run underground. There are two large, natural sink holes, called cenotes, that could have provided plentiful water year round at Chichen, making it attractive for settlement.
World Wide Doomsday Party!
02/29/2012
Leap Day of Leap Year 2012
six days and today was one of them.
In order to make such an accurate calender and to be able to predict solar eclipses centuries int the future, did not the Maya have to know differential equations?
The meshing of two gears can be considered a differential equation. It's why they call it a differential gear in your car's drive train
And from the drawings I have seen they were meshing stone gears. So they KNEW algebra, in a sense
If human kind invests more in science instead of GOP, intrest groups and other extraneous programs, i believe we will be better off and be able to adapt to extreme conditions past societies have not. Can we learn from the mistakes of others? Obviously the Mayans did not due to their Pre Classic, Classic and Post Classic reigns. Why did they fail three times? Because they over-consumed their resources on top of climate change without development of new techniques to adapt.
Just how far back do the Maya go? 10000 BC? Were they keeping records all that time? If so several rises and fall must have occurred that were part of their history
Perhaps they assumed there were other civilizations on Earth going through the same boom and bust cycles due to too many people depleting resources in time of need, such as drought. Perhaps these cycles are represented in their calendar and they just happened to coincide with heavenly events that the Maya then used to predict the coming of those good and bad times.
And here we are, too many people fighting over oil, along with climate change, right on schedule
Just TRY predicting an upcoming solar eclipse, let alone one centuries in the future, by just using bunch of sticks and rocks in your back yard. Pretty damned impressive, given theirs is the most accurate calendar ever devised. Now THAT is observational skills on steroids!
And SOMEHOW they knew all this stuff was gonna line up come this winter's solstice, even the center of the Milky way. That is not fantasy or fiction, it is fact, That line up WILL occur. How did they know that???
argue all you want on the consequences of the line up, the amazing thing is they knew it would happen on an exact date hundreds of years in the future, Bizarre, without a good logical answer and VERY good math skills sans a computer
Perhaps that would be the case indeed if written records were in context to human kind in general. If Mayans did know other societies cycled through rise and collapse, wouldn't you think that instead of building pyrimids, falsified caves and underwater cenotes with the far superior concept of zero and linguistics that they would of learned from their mistakes as well as others; and the numerous murals depicting life back then? No, because their whole existence was as society is now, to deplete their resources because they/we can. Because their status and hierarchical structure allowed them to do so all in the name of their theist belief of Xibalba and ours of power.
The need of workers to build pyramids probably trumped the effect on the environment. So population growth was both encouraged and allowed. More tax revenue too. Perhaps the destructive cycle did not become evident until the 3rd time around.
Our own recent history welldemonstrated the effects of over-use when we created the dust bowls accross the Texas area in the 20's. We can visibly see the effects of current weather disruption in the mountainous locales in Panama and the ravaging erosion. Our brothers and sisters up north in Alaska's far reaches and low lying Islanders in the Pacific know that the rising sea spells a certain doom for their homes. Until a terrorist bombs your home or the weather takes out your neighborhood far too many people will just bury their heads in the sand or just think someone else will take care of the problem. Reducing our pollution and carbon footprint is not a dream, our day of reckoning is coming sooner than you think.
You forgot the dramatic and inexplicable shrinkage of the Arctic ice cap and what that will do to the weather. Inexplicable using natural causes as an impetus
Yes , this winter , has finally proved the existence of global warming . It has been one of the warmest winters on record . Yes too the Arctic ice cap is melting . This is a fact known of the past 10 years or more , but not know to yoo yoo in political office deliberately or many on this blog . The fact is the US Canada , and Russia have been arguing over extra water ways for ownereship of these waterways due melting of ice in the Arctic . Green is really important for the US . After seeing the Bloom box on cnbc obvious Obama and the Republicans are fouled up about wind and solar power when the fuel cells already are in use by major corporations , or the bloom box , to power hugh facilities without any carbon based fuel . Again , these officials are clowns , when the solution is already here and eliminates solar and winds as not needed . You should be able to look up the Bloom box in Google. The main fuctional element of the Bloom box is sand - ocean sand .
Draught is repeated here in some areas of U.S.A. but some areas have flooding. And Mexico has a long coastal line and the water might not be that severe as the study said.