What Happened to the Mayan Civilization

Week 2 Assignment 1 Michael McCue HUM111 World Cultures I Dr. Andrew N Allphin 16 October 2012 No one endure say for certain what happened to the Mayan people, but theories abound and include varied attainable alternatives to explain the abrupt and mysterious fade of the Mayan shade. Many historians have questioned how or why the Mayan civilization disappeared after the 10th century however on that point is no definitive answer to this question.One possible theory is the Mayans civilization grew to such an extent that they deforested so much of the region that it had significant climate changes, thereby forcing the Mayan people to immigrate to other regions (Server, 2004), this theory has some scientific background, and scientists have used satellites to study the topsoil of Central America. They found that effective before the civilization collapse, the sediment had changed from tree pollen to weed pollen, suggesting there were no more trees in the area.The result of a treele ss environment is the wearing of fertile topsoil, warmer climate, and a possible decrease of precipitation. Since the Mayans depended on weewee reservoirs from precipitation, this would have had a detrimental effect. Another theory surrounding the disappearance of the Mayan people is consistent droughts that took place preceding the tenth century and the reduction of civilization through various wars caused the Mayan civilization to dwindle down to virtual(prenominal) extinction.While both theories sound relevant, scientific data is also consistent to what is occurrence the region of Central and South American and the deforestation of the rain forest. perhaps history is only repeating itself. References Medina-Elizalde, M. & Rohling, E. J. (2012). Collapse of Classic Maya Civilization colligate to Modest Reduction in Precipitation. Science 24 February 2012, Vol. 335 no. 6071 pp. 956-959. inside10. 1126/science. 1216629 Sever, T. (2004). The Rise and Fall of the Mayan Empire. em ailprotected Headline News. Retrieved from http//science. nasa. gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/15nov_maya/picpic