The Mayan Civilization Research Paper

The Classic Maya Civilization: Factors that Lead to its Collapse

Introduction

The Maya Civilization, a Mesoamerican civilization, existed from about 600 BC to around AD 1546 (Scholastic Library Publishing 2005: 600). The civilization occupied the lowland area of Guatemala, Belize, parts of Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador. They were known to be elites and classical for producing great architectural monuments.

However, The Mayan Civilization was not to last and by the end of AD 1546, the enigmatic classic civilization collapsed. What could have led to the fall of such a remarkable ancient civilization? What transpired before the collapse?

This essay aims at identifying the various issues that contributed to the fall of the regime. In particular,

this essay seeks to establish that plagues, Poor cultivation techniques, defeat by a foreign military, stiff competition in the long distance trade and ecological factors led to the collapse of the classic civilization. This essay also suggests that the class conflicts and warfare that existed among the Mayan lead to the destruction of this civilization.
Scholarly Arguments
According to Tainter (1988: 52), the occurrence of yellow fever and plague may have resulted in the fall of the Classic Maya Civilization. It has also been arguably stated that a very drastic climate affected the Mayan lowlands which hampered their agricultural activities (McKillop 2002: 31). Schlesinger et al. (2001: 53) maintained that the Slash-and-burn clearing culture of forest among the Mayan rendered their savannahs untillable. The intervention of the foreign military in the Mayan Regime seems to have weakened their structure according to Henderson (1997: 286). There were also external changes in the foreign interaction and trade between Mayan and their foreign long distance trade counterparts, like competition, which brought stress to the elite administration. The administration, unable to handle this stresses, alternatively gave up on the trade (Wright 2006: 10).
The population of Maya over the years grew to very high figures compared to the natural resources in which the civilization held. The little natural resources, coupled with overspecialized agriculture, were not able to sustain this huge population, leading to a slow decline in the regime (Anderson 2014: 117). According to Gabbert (2004: 91), internal conflicts between the social classes in Maya contributed to weakening their Classic structure and eventually the fall of the civilization.