...| Disappearance of the Mayan Civilization | | | Jerome A Brown Jr. | 2/4/2013 | | No one can say for certain what happened to the Mayan people, but theories abound and include varied possible alternatives to explain the abrupt and mysterious disappearance of the Mayan civilization. Many historians have questioned “how” or “why” the Mayan civilization disappeared after the 10th century; however there is no definitive answer to this question. One possible theory is the Mayan’s civilization grew to such an extent that they deforested so much of the region that it had significant climate changes, thereby forcing the Mayan people to immigrate to other regions (Server, 2004), this theory has some scientific background, and scientists have used satellites to study the topsoil of Central America. They found that right before the civilization collapse, the sediment had changed from tree pollen to weed pollen, suggesting there were no more trees in the area. The result of a treeless environment is the erosion of fertile topsoil, warmer climate, and a possible reduction of precipitation. Since the Mayans depended on water reservoirs from precipitation, this would have had a detrimental effect. Another theory surrounding the disappearance of the Mayan people is consistent droughts that took place preceding the tenth century and the reduction of civilization through various wars caused the Mayan civilization to dwindle down to virtual extinction...
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...Disappearance of the Mayan Civilization The disappearance of the Mayan Civilization has always been a very interesting mystery to me. What happened to the Mayan people? This question has baffled many scientists, researchers, as well as historians since they disappeared of the face of the earth it seems. NASA-funded researchers believe that the Mayans themselves are responsible for their own extinction. The Mayans were supposedly a great culture that constructed pyramids and pavilions throughout Mesoamerica beginning around A.D.300 and disappearing around A.D. 900 (Harvey, D.A. 1977). By around A.D. 900, the Mayan civilization was in steep decline. New building stopped and the pyramids and ball courts were gradually abandoned to the jungle. Around this time the lowland population dropped by around 90 percent. There has been a lot of debate about what caused the collapse of the classic-era Mayan culture. Research by Stuart and Harvey (1977) suggests that the burdens of ritual warfare between city-states became too much or that a great epidemic decimated the population. Usually cultures will slowly become extinct as a result of numerous battles and many times from famine. However the Mayans simply disappeared as a culture. Researchers believe that Mayans were in harmony with their environment, but they made common mistakes as does most other cultures. Deforesting of the land and vegetation caused suffering for the Mayan people in that they could not find food and...
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...Could you imagine the whole United States just disappearing? That is what happened to the Mayans. In a time span of only one hundred years the whole Maya population was wiped out, there are several theories about what the cause for this decline was. What anthropologists do know for sure is that the Mayans were an ancient mesoamerican civilization dating back to 250 B.C “made up of more than 19 million people”(smithsonian.com). Their empire centered in the tropical lowlands of what is now Guatemala. The Maya people reached their peak of power around the 6th century A.D. The Mayans were successful in many ways; History.com, a website dedicated to informing the public about important historical information, states, “The Maya excelled at agriculture,...
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...The Mayan civilization The ancient group of people called, Mayans were located in Mesoamerica. They were also known as the Classic Maya. They were believed to exist in the 8th and 9th century. Scholars state a theory surrounding their cause of disappearance. The Ecological theory is the main cause of the abrupt disappearance of the Mayan civilization. The ecological collapse theory states the main reason for the abrupt disappearance of the Mayan people pertains to natural causes such as droughts, climate change, and environmental change. Some scientist states that climate change was the main cause of their disappearance. Unusual shifts in atmospheric patterns took place throughout this time. Volcano eruptions could have been caused by the pattern change which may have destroyed civilization. There were long dry seasons that caused severe droughts each year. This caused a great effect on the Mayan vegetation and fertility. The Mayans hydrological engineering depended on seasonal rains to replenish their water supplies. This epidemic affected many people in the Mayan civilization. In conclusion, I believe this is plausible, because this can be related to modern society. Natural disasters such as, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, and rain storms has been known to destroy cities and take the lives of innocent people in this current day. It is evident that because of the ecological collapse the Mayan civilization could not survive. References Joel, P. (2006). Mayan Culture...
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...unknown, but the theories for their disappearance have varied. Two of these theories include constant warfare and possible invasion by competing city-states, and the other is the exhaustion of their environment no longer able to sustain a large population and it’s constant growth. The latter of these theories was proposed by Atmospheric scientist Bob Oglesby. According to Oglesby the collapse of the Mayan settlements was in large due to forestation. The evidence he found was based on the thickness of the floor stones in the Mayan ruins. His study revealed that they would have needed about 20 trees to build a fire large enough to make the plaster floor stone that is about one square meter. In the earliest ruins, these stones were as thick as a foot or even more, but these stones progressively got thinner in the more recent built ruins; those were only a few inches thick. Oglesby calls the Mayan deforestation the granddaddy of all deforestation events. Further studies reveal that the Mayan population reached its peak population at 1,800 to 2,600 people per square mile. In comparison, Los Angeles County averaged 2,300 people per square mile in 2000. Due to this constant growth of the Mayan Empire, its environment was exhausted of its natural resources for it to further thrive and survive; thus by 950 CE the population crashed and he estimated about 90% of the Maya people died. In my brief research of the Mayan people, this theory is the one that...
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...What Happened To the Mayans? Michelle Boseman Professor Sisson Humanities 111 Many historians have questioned “how” or “why” the Mayan civilization disappeared after the 10th century; however there is no definitive answer to this question. One possible theory is the Mayan’s population and heavy environmental consumption may have lead to deforestation and soil exhaustion grew to such an extent that they deforested so much of the region thereby forcing the Mayan people to immigrate to other regions, this theory has some scientific background, and scientists have used satellites to study the topsoil of Central America. Scientist have found that right before the civilization collapse, the sediment had changed from tree pollen to weed pollen, suggesting there were no more trees in the area. The result of a treeless environment is the erosion of fertile topsoil, warmer climate, and a possible reduction of precipitation. Since the Mayans depended on water reservoirs from precipitation, this would have had a detrimental effect. Initially the Mayan civilization prospered throughout the lowlands. From 300 B.C. to 900 A.D. the Mayans developed a relatively productive agriculture-based economy based on the surrounding terrains, which lead to expansions in population. Mayan agriculture suffered from various limitations, which made their level of stability somewhat fragile. The Mayans relied heavily upon a narrow range of crops including corn, which made up 70% of their diet,...
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...Crazy things happens everyday in this world. Sometimes strange things appear every now and then. There are mysteries that are heard which may be solve or maybe not. Some leaves the people clueless and others leaves them with new knowledge. These are legends that been around for decades and centuries, which had hundreds of people trying to solve them. Everyone hears about people, cars, materials going missing or disappearing; but planes and ships disappearing in the same location over periods of time have something to do with the Bermuda Triangle (Devil’s Triangle) and its mysteries. The Bermuda Triangle is located in between Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda. Its responsible for a lot of missing ships,planes, and people; or strange event that happened over the past years. The area of the triangle is known for planes and ships to lose signal and transmission with their base and have strange readings with their compass. The compass reading seem to point to the actual north instead of the magnetic field north. The location was also seen with a a glow like a meteor and to have strange compass readings when Christopher Columbus was sailing to new world, “a great flame of fire, which seemed to fall from the sky into the sea, about four or five leagues distant.” (The life and voyages of Christopher COlumbus pg. 37 para 1) The birth of the Bermuda Triangle for the U.S. started when Flight 19 were set off on a bombing practice routine and disappeared. Pilot Lt. Taylor who was the leader...
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...The Mystery behind the End of Mayan Civilization Vanessa Espinoza Professor Perry World Cultures I Strayer University Mayan Mystery Civilizations all over, rose to become strong, powerful nations and descended due to many reasons. One civilization in particular, is the Mayans. The Mayan Empire began around 1800 B.C and lasted until around 900 A.D. Located in tropical environments, in what is now known as the Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, Belize and parts of México. The Mayan people were known for their advance levels of mathematics, astronomy, and they develop a calendar system based on 365 days that we use in present day. The Mayan people also created many elaborate cities with stoned pyramids that partially remain intact today. How can a great nation, who developed a complex system, and flourish for many centuries, just disappear; leaving many questions unanswered? What happened to the Mayans? This is one mystery that has many people asking questions about what happened to a large number of people without wondering if this could ever happen again. Two theories that could explain what happened to the Mayan people are: drought and climate changes lead to the demised of the Mayan culture, and/or warfare from neighboring cities or foreign invaders caused the Mayans to become extinct. Scientist Martin Medina-Elizalde and Eelco Rohling believe that the climate changes affected the rainfall causing droughts. Many others believe that invaders from other countries...
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...surroundings Flight 19. A flight crew took off from base in Florida, which they thought was a regular routine training. All 5 planes had performed the practice bombing run without a hitch. As they were flying back to base, the Pilots had suddenly reported that their equipment was going crazy. The radio signals were growing weaker, and weaker as if they were flying the wrong way. According to Lee Ann Obringer,’’ The tower began receiving transmissions from the flight leader that they were lost, compasses were not working, and everything looked wrong.’’ There was no longer any sign of Flight 19. An extensive Navy investigation was ordered to search for Flight 19 crew members. After an extended search the Navy had no clues to explain Flight 19 disappearance. The Bermuda Triangle region is known for its...
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...surroundings Flight 19. A flight crew took off from base in Florida, which they thought was a regular routine training. All 5 planes had performed the practice bombing run without a hitch. As they were flying back to base, the Pilots had suddenly reported that their equipment was going crazy. The radio signals were growing weaker, and weaker as if they were flying the wrong way. According to Lee Ann Obringer,’’ The tower began receiving transmissions from the flight leader that they were lost, compasses were not working, and everything looked wrong.’’ There was no longer any sign of Flight 19. An extensive Navy investigation was ordered to search for Flight 19 crew members. After an extended search the Navy had no clues to explain Flight 19 disappearance. The Bermuda Triangle region is known for its...
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...No one can say for sure know what happened to the Mayan people and their civilization, but there are many theories that are out there that were researched by scientist and theologians. The first theory, which was researched by Jared Diamond an American evolutionary biologist, would be that the cities of the Mayans got over populated and the natural resources may have been stretched to the breaking point. The second theory was due to the climate, the drought and the rainfall. Penn State anthropologist Dr. Douglas Kennett stated that, researchers have concluded that the climate change overturned the long-term wet weather pattern in Yucatan Peninsula and Central America to severe famine (T, Internationl Busniess, 2012). Many researchers thought that the drought and the lack of rainfall were what wiped out the Mayan Civilization. David Hodell a geologist from the University of Florida feels that the impacting drought could have been due to the changing position of the sun, as finding from the lake the team selected for their study (T, Internationl Busniess, 2012). Between 660 and 100CE, the climate change shared dying trend with less rainfall and long droughts. Numerous studies have shown that there were many prolonged droughts around the time of the civilizations decline. Gerald Haug, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, found it worse than that. He did a year by year reconstruction of the lake sediments and it showed that the rainfall was abundant from 550 to...
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... The mystery of Easter Island has puzzled humanity for years. Easter Island is the world’s most remote inhabited island (“The Mystery of Easter Island”), but a group of people managed to sail there and establish a society that created about 900 stone statues across the island ("Easter Island -- World Heritage Site -- National Geographic”). Over the years, scientists have discovered many facts about the people of Easter Island and their achievements, and have been able to create several plausible theories. However, none can fully explain the mystery that is Easter Island. 1. Facts Easter Island lies roughly 1,289 miles from the nearest inhabited island and 2,182 miles from the nearest continental point (“Easter Island”). The earliest settlers of Easter Island were Polynesian, though none know where exactly they sailed from (“Mysterious Places: Explore Easter Island in Words and Pictures”). As their population increased, the Rapa Nui people formed clans. In fact, it is believed that the large stone statues–called moai-found on the island are commemorative images of lineage heads, though they are not portraits of specific individuals (“Mysterious Places: Explore Easter Island in Words and Pictures”). Easter Island’s moai range from about 4 to 33 feet in height, with the average moai being roughly 13 feet high (“Stone Giants”). Of the 887 moai on Easter Island, only 288 made it to their final resting positions. 45% of the moai never left the quarry and 10% were found abandoned...
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...The disappearance of Malaysian Air flight 370 was one of the most important events of 2014. On March 8th, 2014, a commercial passenger plane with 239 people onboard simply disappeared into thin air. The plane originated in Kuala Lumpur and its final destination was to be Beijing, China. Needless to say, it never made it. Less than one hour after takeoff, the air traffic controllers lost all contact with the cockpit, it disappeared from radar, and it has not been heard from since. There are some people who claim to have seen the plane on their radar after it disappeared, and some who say they actually saw a mystery plane in the sky during the night. There are may theories floating around as to what happened to this doomed flight. Some people...
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...Climate Change and Trade Networks as Causes of the Classic Maya Collapse The civilization of the ancient Lowland Maya was a thriving and advanced society, capable of building great monuments able to survive to the present. It is therefore an archaeological mystery as to why, at the end of the Classic period, from the eighth to eleventh century, Maya sites show signs of massive decline and even desertion; this is referred to as the “collapse” of the Maya, though it was not an immediate nor evenly distributed phenomenon (Douglas, Demarest, Brenner, & Canuto, 2016, 614, 634). Several theories as to the cause, or causes, of the collapse have been suggested. One theory points to climate change causing severe droughts during this period as a major factor (Douglas et al., 2016), while another suggests the changes in trade networks played a role (Golitko, Meierhoff, Feinman, & Williams, 2012). While collapse was likely caused by multiple influences, this paper argues that the shift from inland trade routes to coastal trade routes and the resulting effects on Maya economies had a greater influence on the collapse of Classic period Lowland Maya societies than the severe droughts generated by climate change. Both theories are backed by compelling evidence, but shifting trade routes was arguably more influential for a few reasons, one of which is the timing of trade changes and droughts in relation to collapse. The study by Golitko et al. (2012) examined the distribution of obsidian—a...
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...First of all, The Bermuda Triangle, also given the nickname "Devil's Triangle", is situated in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean. That is where aircrafts and ships are reported to be missing under mysterious conditions. For the Bermuda Triangle to be considered as the "devil's triangle" their must be some sort of proof that there really is paranormal activity going on in that area. Their are many cases of paranormal activity, but this one is not only the most confusing considering the fact they still haven't found the cause for the incident, but this is also the first ever affair in the history of the Bermuda Triangle. This incident took place a while back on September 17, 1950. It is about the loss of flight 19. Which was a group...
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