All of the sudden, Jared Diamond might not seem so crazy. From Dan Vergano at USA Today:
What do we think? What would Yali say?"Apocalypto" fans might be forgiven for thinking the fabled collapse of the
ancient Maya, the retreat of a civilization from pyramids and ceremonial centers
across Central America from 800 to 1000 A.D., involved all sorts of cataclysmic
events, war, famine and devastation. Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies
Choose to Fail or Succeed detailed how environmental disasters might be to
blame, a popular scholarly explanation for the Maya collapse.
"These models suggest that as ecosystems were destroyed by mismanagement or
were transformed by global climatic shifts, the depletion of agricultural and
wild foods eventually contributed to the failure of the Maya sociopolitical
system," writes environmental archaeologist Kitty Emery of the Florida Museum of
Natural History in the current Human Ecology journal.
- A.S. Noel
1 comments:
The study seems to be inconclusive. However, in such a large and 'modern' society. Is looking at purely animal remains the best indicator of the general population's diet? I am under the impression that for most civilizations meat is reserved for mainly the ruling elite. Perhaps the Mayan's chief grain hit a road block? Looking at the non-meat food stuffs would give a better cross section of the population's diet.
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