Annotated Bibliography: The Collapse Of The Mayan Culture

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Annotated Bibliography “Thesis Statement” The Mayans were a native Mesoamerican group of people who erected one of the most sophisticated cultures in the Western Hemisphere. They inhabited areas in southern Mexico, and also surrounding Locations included Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and parts of Honduras. The Mayan religion civilization came into prominence in 250 A.D., administering a polytheistic approach to worship which included human blood sacrifices to honor their gods or to culminate the crowning of a King. Historians record that the Mayan civilization abruptly and mysteriously abandoned their cities between 900 and 925 A.D.; this also marks the end of the classical period in Mayan history. In this Annotated Bibliography, I will analyze and summarize key …show more content…

Popular believe we want to believe that the Mayan culture collapsed because of disintegration of the political structure. Actual reasons of the collapse were much more complex than a breakdown of the political hierarchy, contrary to this belief evidence suggests a disorganization of system structures such as agriculture. Variables that caused the Mayan collapse started with the late classic Maya and their issues with reproduction and raising children due to a series of nutritional problems which cause the burden of disease. These depopulation factors coupled with the decrease of full production because of a lack of labor required to maintain the agricultural ecosystems which cause erosion of the systems economic base. The insight of this article suggests that the collapse of the Mayan civilization was caused primarily to environmental instability of their ecosystem. The author is evidence in this article allows the conclusion to be drawn that the Mayans religion was not the cause to the collapse of their civilization, but rather the inability to sustain population growth and ecosystem erosion lead to their

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