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Posted on 01/12/2003 11:28:32 AM PST by blam
How weather brought down Mayan empire
Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday January 12, 2003
The Observer
Climate change is inevitable, unpredictable, and has been responsible for bringing down some of the world's greatest civilisations. Soon it may do the same to ours. That is the conclusion of researchers who have found that the Mayans - whose empire reached its peak around 700AD - were destroyed because central America was afflicted by a 200-year drought.
The discovery has been made by the American archaeologist Richardson Gill, who argues that the Mayans - famed for their massive stepped pyramids and astronomy - simply starved to death when their water supplies ran dry, a fate that has profound implications for the future of humanity.
Gill's research, based on studies of ice cores taken from glaciers in the Andes, is controversial. Many historians believe only cultural changes such as war, trade or rebellion affect the course of history and that people can always adapt to climate change. In the case of the Mayans, it is generally assumed they were destroyed by invaders.
Gill's work challenges this. 'I have seen with my own eyes the devastating effects of drought,' he says in Scientific American. Deprived of water, the Mayans could no longer grow crops and perished.
Gill and his contemporaries argue that humanity is much more vulnerable to weather changes than realised. Studies of tree rings and ice cores taken from glaciers have created a detailed pattern of climate fluctuations going back a thousand years. When matched against historical events, these have revealed startling correspondences.
The Vikings colonised Iceland, Greenland and North America at a time when Europe was enjoying warm weather. Then, around AD1300, the weather worsened and the Little Ice Age began, gripping the world until around 1880. Its worst periods coincided with the Irish potato famine, the destruction of the Spanish Armada, and the French Revolution, while the Viking settlements in America and Greenland were wiped out.
'The weather of 1788 didn't start the French Revolution,' historian Brian Fagan says, 'but the shortage of grain and bread contributed in large measure to its timing.' Similarly, it wasn't the navy that saved England from the Armada in 1588, it was the lousy weather.
Even small fluctuations have had an impact that still affects us, adds Fagan. For example, in 1816, summer temperatures fell to winter levels. Lord Byron and Percy and Mary Shelley, stuck in Switzerland, had to entertain themselves. Thus Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was born in an atmosphere of dank climatic failure. Similarly, Charles Dickens's experiences of bitter winters influenced his stories, including A Christmas Carol, from which we still derive our snow-decked yuletide imagery.
The new research indicates even cultures in the tropics are vulnerable to climatic disruption.
'The reasons for the collapse of the Mayan civilisation have always been controversial,' bio-geographer Philip Stott says. 'But this indicates that drought was a critical factor, even though the Mayans were based in a part of the world considered to be hot and wet.
'And if the weather killed off the Mayans, what other great tropical civilisations might have suffered? The cause of the demise of Angkor, home of the great Khmer kings of Cambodia, has always puzzled historians. Drought may well have caused their collapse.'
If the world has been so vulnerable in the past, it is certainly at risk in future. With the world's population heading towards nine billion, and global temperatures rising, the danger is increasing.
'More than 200 million people now live in marginal lands - round the Sahara and in Bangladesh, for example,' Fagan adds. 'Another major fluctuation and the death toll could dwarf anything that has affected humanity before.'
Stott says: 'The fluctuations indicate the cold periods are the calamitous ones - which suggests all our fears about global warming may be misplaced.'
heheheh
Uhhh. What's that word "similarly" doing in there? This guy says that weather did not start the French Revolution, and similarly weather did destroy the Spanish Armada.
That's muddled thinking.
Ah-HAH! So all those arguements going around at the time about the link between over-flatulent Llama's and global warming WAS THE TRUTH. Now we know! All those enviro-wakkos are really onto something. Now if we could just stop their form of verbal flatulence we just might save mankind...
What bullshit! More accurately would be: "Deprived of water, the Mayans could no longer build or support large cities, and dispersed into smaller tribal groups". I am sure there are folk of Mayan blood throughought Central America today--they just probably think of themselves as members of "xyz" tribe.
Another comment is that our ability to compensate for weather changes using technology is VASTLY higher than the primitive Mayans.
I don't want this to change.
So far, man's influence on climate change is well below the natural variations we see in the geologic record.
I don't want this to change.
The long term numbers excluding surface temp readings, indicate a slight cooling over the last 100 years, but not outside of the natural variations.
I don't want this to change.
The real question is why do a minority of scientist and the press, in disregaurd of the data, wish to scare and mislead the world?
Maybe this will change.
But probably not.
Grant money and publishing for the scientists. Fame and column inches for the press. Nobody ever became famous for saying, "The sky is not falling."
I can almost forgive the press, as sensationalism is in their job description. But scientists should know better and understand how to test hypotheses and interpret data.
You have correctly stated the actual result.
The Maya weren't wiped out. I am currently reading about the Pueblos in our own southwest who experienced a similar response to change. I think the final word has yet to be spoken on exactly what the dhange was, but drought is suspect.
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