Posted on 12/19/2009 7:43:25 PM PST by SunkenCiv
...Anabel Ford, an archaeologist at UC Santa Barbara and director of the university's MesoAmerican Research Center, suggests... that the forest gardens cultivated by the Maya demonstrate their great appreciation for the environment. Her findings are published in the current issue of the Journal of Ethnobiology in an article titled "Origins of the Maya Forest Garden: Maya Resource Management." ...The ancient Maya, who farmed without draft animals or plows, and had access only to stone tools and fire, followed what Ford calls the "milpa cycle." It is an ancient land use system by which a closed canopy forest is transformed into an open field for annual crops, then a managed orchard garden, and then a closed canopy forest again. The cycle covers a time period of 12 to 24 years. A misconception about the milpa cycle is that the fields lie fallow after several years of annual crop cultivation. "In reality, in the 'high-performance milpa,' fields are never abandoned, even when they are forested," Ford explains in the article. "The milpa cycle is a rotation of annuals with successive stages of forest perennials during which all phases receive careful human management.
(Excerpt) Read more at ia.ucsb.edu ...
The reason they never utilized draft animals was the fact that the wheel, yes the wheel, was never used on any scale in their society. Abundant slave labor probably created that fundamental technological retrogression. They were too busy invading, stealing from, killing their neighbors to invent much of anything.
Didn’t we just read an article published here that the Mayan’s became a dwindling few and were attacked by their enemies?
They discovered this when they found a bunch of arrowheads (made by their enemies) in the Mayan living area.
The sudden changes in weather can be devastating to a people or nation. Around 1300 A.D., there were three years of almost continuous rain that caused a ruinous famine in the British Isles. Crops sown in the soggy soil rotted, no food was harvested for three years and untold numbers of people died.
A good read on the effects of climate on civilizations is The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization, by Brian Fagan (he also wrote The Little Ice Age).
There really weren’t any sufficiently large draft animals in the pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere, except for llamas and alpacas in South America. Those camelids were impratical in a tropical climate such as Central America, or for that matter, in the Amazon basin.
There is a reason why horses aren’t found in southern Africa before the white man settled there: the tropical, equitorial climate is a killer to horses.
They didn’t use the wheel. It helps human hands as well. They knew about it, but other objectives took priority.
Never came up I guess.
They either inherited or seized technology. I find the cultures fascinating but the recent year’s reporting disgustingly romanticized.
She’s daydreaming, IMO. Crop rotations or fertilizations don’t require re-forestation. Some archeologists and other anthropologists—especially feminists—often tend to idealize and embellish about peoples of the distant past for lack of evidence for substantially informed debates. ...warrior women and the whole kooky paradigm.
I was fascinated by Collapse until I discovered that Diamond has no trouble mixing truth with fantasy. I believe there is a book challenging his assertions directly although I don’t remember the title ( other than the word collapse is in it ).
Does megaselling scientist-historian Jared Diamond get the whole world right? http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/01/16/big_picture_guy?pg=full
Another Flaw in the Diamond
http://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/another-flaw-in-the-diamond/
Possible Role of Climate in the Collapse of the Classic Maya Civilization
Drought may have done them in...?
The Maya collapse: When theoretical preconceptions get in the way of understanding
Bicker, bicker, bicker....
With no large animals suitable for domestication as draft animals the wheel is largely useless.
I have been wondering about his credibility. He seems to sing one note. Doesnt seem to like Western Civ very much either, particularly Christians
maya drought site:freerepublic.com
There was also a total lack of draft animals, and a surplus of human labor. The Maya tended to live pretty compact, had no water shortage (most of the time), and like most civilizations and cultures with stable food sources, had big families. The old-school l’arning I got was that archaeologists had shown a series of four or five population peaks in PreColumbian Central and South America, the last one being early 16th century — and Cortez arrived in 1520 with a small armed band and foreign diseases. :’)
There’s an FR topic about it, probably early this year.
Smart!
I suspect rapid acceleration downhill.
I've had the holier than thou Libs 'inform' me of my 'errors' about subjects that I have experienced, and they have only been propagandized about. They have always fervently and tenaciously believed in their own ignorance.
In their minds propaganda and 'theory' trumps experience every time, which is why they still believe Socialism & Communism will work, if only given a 'real' chance.
And made it with water, not milk. Nastier yet. ;-')
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