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Stalagmites in Mexican Caves Reveal Duration and Severity of Drought During the Maya Collapse
Researchers identified eight droughts lasting over three years, including a 13-year event, that likely caused agricultural failures and political instability among the Classic Maya, study finds.
- On Wednesday, University of Cambridge researchers published findings in Science Advances showing a stalagmite from the Yucatán Peninsula suggests multiple droughts, including one lasting 13 years, may have contributed to the Maya civilization's decline.
- Historical records show that during the Terminal Classic Period, paleoclimate records suggest recurring droughts lasting 1 to 10 years in the Maya Lowlands.
- Records reveal the northwest Yucatán experienced 1- to 13-year droughts, including eight wet-season droughts lasting more than three years.
- These droughts threatened Maya agriculture and possibly caused famines, as researchers suggest, and led to the abandonment of limestone Maya cities in the south and end of dynasties.
- This milestone establishes that the accurately and precisely dated droughts provide a new framework for fine-grained analysis of human-climate interactions during the Terminal Classic period.
18 Articles
18 Articles
Maya Civilization Endured 44 Years of Extreme Drought in Final Centuries
In the final two centuries of the Maya civilization, the ancient society suffered multiple severe droughts. Pedro Marcano – CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. The Mayan civilization suffered multiple severe droughts in the final centuries of their society, including one that lasted a devastating 13 years, according to a new high-resolution climate record revealed in the chemical fingerprints of a cave formation. The study, led by the University…
In the Mexican Yucatán ancient stalactite formations grow in caves. Some of them are examined more closely under the scientific examination. The results show the reasons for the Maya's demise.
Researchers have read historical droughts on stalagmites in a Mexican cave. They may have played a role in the downfall of Mayan culture.
After centuries of splendor, the Mayan civilization began to decay in the eighth century of this era, completely collapsing in the next two. They abandoned their cities, with their pyramids, stadiums, ceremonial squares... and their fields, sustained with such ingenious and technological hydraulic engineering as that of their peers, the Arabs. It has been blamed for this process of decline to the neighboring wars, invasions from the north and so…
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