[Wonder Warthog]

"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."

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.

[gaspar]

A major problem that the Mayan civilization was forced to confront was the expansion of agriculture on lands with a limestone substructure located very near the surface. That limestone cap not only reduced the output of crops but its sotanos, or underground cisterns where water collected, were notoriously unreliable. If the Mayans had developed a hydraulic civilization, a la Egypt, it would not have suffered as much.

[bert]

.....and dispersed into smaller tribal groups"....

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.

[Bernard Marx]

"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

Very true. Another major factor overlooked in this discussion is the perpetual warfare that went on between Mayan rulers: the endless captive-takings, ritual sacrifices and depletions of treasuries. This was a huge factor in the demise of the "high" Mayan culture but Mayan descendants are everywhere in the Yucatan, Guatemala, Belize, etc.

Also not mentioned is that for some reason many large Mayan cities like Caracol depended mainly on stored runoff water kept in small reservoirs hacked out of the native limestone. This storage simply wasn't sufficient to sustain a large urban population through any prolonged drought. Exhausted by warfare and with only a slim water surplus on hand, Maya civilization was already in big trouble when the drought came.