Archaeologists have used NASA's infrared satellites to locate many Mayan ruins hidden in the jungles across Central America.
For 1,200 years, the Mayan people ruled Central America. At their peak around 900 AD, major Maya cities numbered more than 800 people per square kilometer. In the outskirts there were about 80-150 people per square meter. But suddenly, everything stopped. This sudden silence is considered one of the greatest demographic disasters in all of human culture - the failure of the vibrant society that the Maya had.
What happened? A number of researchers commissioned by NASA believe they have found a good answer to this.
"They did it to themselves," says Tom Saber, a veteran archaeologist in the field.
"The Maya are sometimes described as people who lived in perfect harmony with their environment," says PhD student Robert Griffin. "But like many other civilizations before and after them, they ended up clearing forests and destroying spaces in order to increase their livelihood in difficult times."
A major drought occurred around the same time the Maya began to disappear. And at the time of their fall, the Maya destroyed almost all the trees in the area in order to plant and grow corn to feed their growing population, they also cut down trees for fire and to create building materials.
"They had to burn 20 trees to heat the lime stones that produced only one square meter of plaster to build their magnificent temples, reservoirs, and memorial tombstones," Saber explains.
He and his team used computer simulations to understand how the forest sparrow played a key role in accelerating the drought. They isolated the consequences of deforestation using proven computer models of weather forecasting.
"We modeled the best and worst scenarios: 100 percent forest clearing in the Mayan areas and no clearing at all," says Saber. "The results were extremely surprising. Losing all the trees caused a 3-4 degree increase in temperature and a 20-30 percent reduction in rainfall."
The results speak for themselves, but more research needs to be done to complete the big picture of the Mayan disappearance. Archaeological records reveal that while several major Maya cities fell during the drought period, other cities survived and even prospered.
"We believe that drought has been understood differently in different regions," explains Griffin. "We suggest that the increase in temperature and decrease in rainfall were caused by deforestation which also caused problems serious enough to push some, but not all, of the central cities beyond their limits."
The clearing of the Mayan forests was done using the agricultural method of cutting down and burning - a method that is still used in old-fashioned places in the world, so the researchers understand how it works.
"We know that every 1 to 3 years a plot of land is cultivated, after which it has to be left to recover for 15 years. At the same time, trees and vegetables can grow back on this land while another area is cut and burned to plant it.”
But what happens if the soil is not allowed to lie down long enough to recover by itself, or if the fields are cultivated more than they are able to supply?
"We believe this is what is happening," says Griffin. "The Maya cut large areas of their land and farmed it too intensively."
Not only did the drought make it difficult to grow enough food, it also made it harder for the Maya to store enough water to survive the dry season."
"The cities tried to keep an 18-month supply of water in their storage reservoirs," says Saber. "For example, Batikal was a storage system that held a million gallons of water. Without sufficient amounts of rainfall, the water reservoirs dried up." Hunger and thirst do not help to make the people happy. The rest, as they say, is already history."
"In some of the central Maya cities, large burial areas have been found, where they contain groups of skulls that have jade stones embedded in their teeth - something reserved only for the Maya elite - perhaps in this case it is the murder of aristocrats", he speculates.
There is no single factor that causes an entire civilization to die out, but deforestation probably accelerated the drought, and could easily have exacerbated other problems such as civil strife, war, famine, and disease.
Many of these insights were made possible with the help of photography from space, notes Saber. "Using infrared satellite information, we located thousands of old and abandoned cities that were discovered for the first time. The Maya used lime plaster as the foundation for the buildings of their great cities filled with ornate temples, observatories, and pyramids. For thousands of years, the lime seeped into the soil. As a result, the plants around the ruins look different in infrared light to this day."
"Space technology is revolutionary in archaeology," he concludes. "We use it to learn about the plight of the ancient tribes in order to avoid a similar fate."
For information on the NASA website
More on the subject on the science website
The end of the world will not come in 2012 (the date the Mayan calendar ends)
Characterization of the blue color used by the Mayans
The disease that brought down at least three empires
Exploring the sun through ancient civilizations
The Aztecs and the Maya offered human sacrifices
Hieroglyphs reveal events that preceded the fall of the Maya
19 תגובות
Planting trees on the roofs of the houses will insulate the houses, reduce electricity consumption, absorb solar radiation and lower the temperature.
All the best for the good content Yael Petar
We are also going to do it to ourselves, if we don't overcome the division.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=188537385356&ref=ts#/group.php?gid=188537385356&ref=ts
It's a rather strange argument - about the connection between the extinction of forests and climate change.
After all, in our time the Amazon forests are being destroyed at a greater rate than ever before. Certainly more than in the Mayan period, and global warming has nothing to do with it, as well as no significant climate changes were recorded in Brazil and other Dr. American countries in recent decades, when the rate of warming was increased.
It is true that hairs add moisture to the air, but they do not create clouds! A warm ocean creates clouds, because water needs to evaporate from very large surfaces (as well as air currents, Coriolis and warm sea currents). Even if we create the forests of Africa, tropical rains will continue to fall there - every day at noon, as they fell there even before the forests existed - the forests were created because of the climate, and not the other way around!
So the claims are very strange. It is more likely to assume that other agricultural problems - climatic drought or global warming or an infectious disease - led to the collapse of the culture. Of course, the findings *on the ground* need to be investigated more.
One thing the satellite really helped - to discover the cities that were covered by jungles. It would be interesting to explore them.
Mayan culture attracts a lot of mystical thinking, not necessarily scientific. At the same time, the writing is intriguing
For those interested in Mayan culture, see Gili Haskin's website
http://www.gilihaskin.com
Yet we have not got it convincingly or steadily right. ,
Avner, error correction,
The Mayan and Inca were two cultures that apparently knew each other, until the arrival of the Spaniards, the connection between North Central America and the South was very slight, and one of the signs of this is a lack of cultural penetration (written - mathematics...) nor animals like the beast of burden that exist in South America, but Not in the center.. (the llama alfa and the guanaco)
The terms were translated from NASA's science website, which is one of NASA's sub-sites, and unlike other websites, both American and other websites of NASA itself, it does not always translate to kilometers.
Regarding 900 AD, corrected, regarding the densities, I will change to 800 people per square kilometer (2,000 per square mile) and 80-150 people per square kilometer in the periphery.
An article on Ynet from the "Hidan" website (13.10.09) tells about the fall of the Mayan culture. Reader Eitan Shalev compared it to the news as published in the world media, and these are his findings:
1. "At the peak of their culture, around 900 BC." Originally: "At their peak around 900 AD", which is 900 AD, not BC.
2. "The main Maya cities numbered more than 2,000 people per 1.6 square kilometers. In the periphery, about 200 to 400 people lived in every 1.5 square kilometers." In the original: "Maya cities teemed with more than 2,000 people per square mile. […] Even in rural areas the Maya numbered 200 to 400 people per square mile".
A mile is about 1.6 km (1.609344), but a square mile is neither 1.5 sq km nor 1.6 sq km, but 1.609344² = 2.589 sq km.
3. Why provide an Israeli reader with a population density index in non-standard area dimensions (number of inhabitants per 1.6 square kilometers) instead of converting to the end and giving him density in dimensions he is familiar with (number of inhabitants per square kilometer)?
Reminds you of something?
Maybe the modern-day metropolis? Clearing forests for fields and pastures for animals just to satisfy the urban man who only takes and demands and then throws in the trash, thus causing an increase in methane gas which is harmful to us all.
The study reflects very well what will happen to all of us if we do not drastically change the way we live and get rid of the consumer culture that will eventually bring us down.
Researchers today are trying to find solutions on how to get rid of global warming, but every solution that is brought up raises other problems. Humans need to learn a new/old law - slowly is sane, don't jump over the navel.
Humans must understand that we belong to the earth and the earth does not belong to us, it was here before us and it will remain after us, so let's not harm it.
Fibonacci
Yitzchak, you received a letter from me 🙂 I loved it!
Those interested in more data on a very similar study are invited to read Prof. Diamond's book "Collapse". He makes a similar claim, perhaps his research will convince you more.
Those who are not interested in buying the book can write directly to Prof. Diamondod (search for his address on Google, it took me a minute to find it) and make claims similar to what is written in the comments here.
Hanan, you are the last one who can say something like that
"By and large - it's all theories and speculations. There is no direct proof of these data, but possibilities that may have been tested on a computer, but not in reality.
""
You killed me with laughter
I guess you have extraterrestrials in the office and nothing is a story
Perhaps this research points to another possibility, but it looks more like the "proofs" provided by Nablus and Arabs on the question "how did they build the pyramids".
By and large - all theories and speculations. There is no direct proof of these data, but possibilities that were tested maybe on a computer, but not in reality.
Hanan Sabat
http://WWW.EURA.ORG.IL
I think there is some inaccuracy here. The Miao civilization ended. But the Mayan and Inca peoples continued to live in all of America, South and North, under a different regime, a tribal, local regime, without a central government, monarchical and exploitative as was actually the rule of the Mayan and Inca kings. That is, until the Spanish and Portuguese took over South America and the English and Irish over the north.
The Mayan rule is actually a tyrannical monarchical rule that was based on the exploitation and oppression of the Mayan and Inca peoples. This government indeed managed a monstrous system of construction and wealth.
Apparently, due to the overexploitation of the forests combined with a severe and long drought, the power of the rulers was undermined, which allowed the people to break free, and perhaps even violently, from the yoke of tyranny.
Good place Guatemala!
I miss San Pedro!
What the researchers call "results" is simply a computer simulation fed with certain data. It doesn't teach anything about what really happened.
Another excuse for a casual article.