Thursday, November 6, 2008

Maya collapse theory

I believe that Maya civilization collapsed because of a famine caused by soil that was unable to support crops. A sign of erosion was found at some houses near Copan, a Mayan city near the Guatemala border, and was most likely caused by over-farming. Over-farming would have caused the Maya soil to lost its nutrients, thereby making the soil unable to support plant life. Also, many Mayan skulls were found to have anemia, a disease caused by a lack of iron in one's diet and undernourishment,
which was caused by a dearth of food and nutrition. Many modern farmers are getting less and less corn from their fields because of a lack of a fallow period, which was caused by the substantial population. The Maya ate maize all year round, and a lack of it would cause many people to starve and a paucity of food. Therefore, my theory is that the Maya civilization collapsed because of a sparseness of food.

4 comments:

Granny Smith said...

GREAT JOB!!! I totally agree with you. This is a good theory, however I have read this one before.

Bellabery said...

Wow a lot of ppl said that the soil turned bad by like pulling crops or things like that but i like urs

River said...

What does anemia have to do with sparsity of food?

Declan said...

If the Mayans could move to different spots, then they could farm in those spots, so they didn't over farm.