Ancient Mayan Deforestation

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The ancient Mayans believed that humans were originally created from yellow and white corn. Although this is not how humans were created, it shows how important corn was to the daily lives of the Mayans. During the golden era of the Mayans before the Spanish conquered them, the Mayan civilization included Guatemala, Belize, the Yucatan Peninsula, and other parts of Mexico. The earliest Mayans were agricultural, growing crops such as corn (maize), beans, squash, and cassava. Around 90% of the Mayan population was involved in farming. For the ancient Maya, food production was so crucial to their well-being that the agricultural cycle, astronomy, and religion were closely linked together. The Maya prayed to many gods of nature, including the …show more content…

According to a study done by researchers at Arizona state university, during the same time that cities were abandoned, there was decreased amount of rainfall as well as an increased rate of deforestation. Another study was done by researchers at Columbia university, where they created a computer simulation based on the data about the Mayan society to observe how deforestation affected rainfall. Based on the simulation, “deforestation reduced precipitation by five to 15 percent and was responsible for 60 percent of the total drying that occurred over the course of a century as the Mayan civilization collapsed.” Both studies showed that as the Mayans continued to use the slash and burn technique for farming, the need for more land also increased as the technique slowly impacted the growth of the crops on the old soil. Deforestation occurred because of this and since farming land absorbs more water that is needed to grow crops, there was a smaller amount of water that was being evaporated, and therefore there was less rainfall. As a result, the crops failed because the droughts happened at random times throughout the summer growing period. Despite the rapid demise of the Mayan civilization and its cuisine, there are many things that are eaten today that originated from the

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