I really like your stuff. I have written comments on your pieces for 3 or 4 years now. You convinced me to start using the term "White Empire" in my writing on the Climate Crisis that's unfolding. Plus, you have far MORE followers that I do. You know what you are doing.
So, it's with the greatest respect that I suggest you need to do more research on the Maya before using them as an example of your social theories. A lot of the information you are referencing is REALLY dated and inaccurate.
I say this ONLY because I know a lot about the Maya and Mesoamerican archeology. I write on it, I'm passionate about it, and I have visited over 40 sites in Mexico, Central, and South America.
The Archeotourist - For those who travel to walk in ruins and breath in museums. - Medium
The Archeotourist - Mesoamerica (Tumblr)
You are building your case on a book from 1990. It was a really good book when it came out and some of it holds up well. Unfortunately a lot of it doesn't.
S&F didn't know a LOT of things that we do now. We know now, "for sure" what crashed the "Classic Maya" civilization. It was DROUGHT. I recommend this book if you can find it.
The Great Maya Droughts: Water, Life and Death by Richardson B Gill (2001)
I review it here - Understanding Climate Change and its implications. My personal book recommendations
Along with this book.
The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire by Kyle Harper (2017).
Because the two things are interconnected. The climate of Europe and the Mediterranean is in a "see-saw" with the climate of Mesoamerica. While the climate started cooling in Europe in 150AD and Rome started collapsing. In Mesoamerica rainfall increased and populations expanded rapidly.
Rome's "Collapse" was Mesoamerica's "Golden Age". Both were the result of Climate Change.
In the 9th century (800s) the situation reversed. Europe started warming and the 400 year period known as "The Long Summer" started. In Mesoamerica they got 400 years of brutal droughts.
The Classic Maya civilization collapsed between 800 and 1000 AD due to a series of brutal 50-year long drought cycles.
Although Dr. Gill's book was derided as “overly simplistic” and “reductively unicausal” by academic archeologists at the time subsequent research has validated Dr. Gill’s theory.
In proving his case Dr. Gill spends a significant portion of the book examining what constitutes a “drought” and the gruesome effects of drought on a population. He informs you for example, that UN studies have found in areas of intense famine, caused by drought.
"only 3–5% of a starving population will resort to consumption of the dead, and only an estimated 1–2% to predatory cannibalism"
Which means, that even in the event of a “starvation level” food shortage in your area. Almost none of your neighbors will try to kill you in order to eat you.
I find that oddly comforting as we transition into a future where there are going to be massive food shortages on a regular basis.
Part of why Dr. Gill does this, is to make the reader, viscerally feel how devastating a severe drought can be. He makes the point, which I have never forgotten, that in a severe drought event you cannot walk out of it.
We need water to live, a constant supply of it. We die without it in three days.
If you were living in a “premodern” city like Copan or Tikal and you had a year when almost no rain fell, all the wells ran dry, and all the rivers stopped running. Then you were dead.
All of you, everyone in the city. ALL AT ONCE. In premodern societies a drought could literally be a "city killer" worse than a nuclear weapon.
There was no way to bring water to a city to save anyone.
If you fled with the 5 or 6 gallons of water you could carry on your back, the furthest you would be able to go would be about 100 miles. If the affected area was larger than that, if the drought was regional, then you were dead.
What Gill makes really, painfully clear is that droughts don’t just cause people to abandon cities. Drought has the power to kill cities and their whole populations. A bad series of droughts, or just one "megadrought” has the power to kill a civilization.
In the case of the Maya, that's what happened.
Direct calibration between stalagmite δ18O and rainfall amount offers the first quantitative estimation of rainfall variability during the Terminal Classic Period.
Our results show that eight severe droughts, lasting from 3 to 18 years, occurred during major depopulation events of Classic Maya city-states.
During these droughts, rainfall was reduced by 52% to 36%. The number and short duration of the dry intervals help explain why the TCP collapse of the Mayan civilization occurred over 150 years.
S&F had no idea this was the case. They were looking for "social causes" for the COLLAPSE and they projected their Western ideas about cities, civilization, and Elites onto the Maya.
Just like the early Mayanist Eric Thompson had projected his post WWI desire for a "peaceful culture" onto them. When he saw a culture of "peaceful priest kings" obsessed with TIME.
This criticism also applies to Tainter's work. While I am a HUGE fan, he didn't really know that much about the Maya.
