What Actually Happened to the Mayan Civilization

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You may have heard of the Mayan civilization in your history class, observed their ruins when you visited Mexico, or seen their portrayals in the movie “Apocalypto.” You may also know them as the people who predicted the end of the world, a date that has constantly been shifted by various theorists every time the predicted collapse fails to materialize. Given our current existential crises, it’s likely that one day, those predicting the end of the world will be right.

Over 1,000 years ago, the mighty Mayan civilization, one of the most impressive empires of the Western hemisphere, just disappeared. How did the Mayans predict the end of the world but fail to foresee their own collapse? We sent a research team back in time to the moment just before the Mayan empire fell to find out what happened.

The first signs of the Mayan civilization appeared in 1500 B.C. in modern-day Guatemala, southern Mexico, and parts of Belize. Small villages started to form, organized around the cultivation of maize (corn), beans, and squash. Gradually, the Mayans developed more advanced farming techniques like irrigation and terracing systems. However, they weren’t the only civilizations in the area at the time. The Mayans lived alongside the Olmecs, widely regarded as the first major culture of the region of present-day Mexico. Most archaeologists and historians believe the Olmecs significantly influenced Mayan society. However, more recent findings have raised questions about whether the Olmecs actually came first or if the two civilizations developed simultaneously.

Drs. Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan, a husband-and-wife anthropologist team, spent years excavating the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Ceibal. Initially, Ceibal was thought to have been influenced by the Olmec city of La Venta. However, when Drs. Inomata and Triadan used radiocarbon dating on the oldest structures they discovered at Ceibal, they found that they predated the most ancient construction found in La Venta by two hundred years. Thus, it seems that the Olmecs were not the Mayans’ “mother civilization” but rather developed around the same time.

Many archaeologists now believe that the distinctions between Olmecs and Mayans are erroneous, and it’s likely many Mesoamerican mini-civilizations started developing concurrently after the start of maize agriculture, borrowing from and influencing each other. This belief is strengthened by the fact that mentions of the Olmecs gradually vanish from writings over time, and the Olmecs as a group seem to disappear almost completely by 400 B.C. However, the Mayan civilization continued to advance and grow at an impressive pace.

Over the next centuries, the original Mayan villages kept growing and expanding until they became full-fledged cities. Unlike the first communities of basic houses and farms, these cities had large religious centers, temples, palaces, athletic fields, and public gathering places. The Mayans also engaged in extensive metalworking with gold and copper and developed a complex hieroglyphic writing system that was only fully deciphered in the last century. Archaeologists estimate that the system of writing was created between 200 and 300 B.C., which is earlier than initially thought. This shows that we are still learning about the Mayan civilization, and much of its history, culture, and daily life is still shrouded in mystery today.

What we have gleaned comes from inscriptions, archaeological finds, and their only four surviving codices, as well as books written on paper made from wild fig trees held together by jaguar skin covers. There are only four codices in existence because the Spanish destroyed most of the books when they found them upon arrival, decrying them as pagan. However, unlike most ancient Western Hemisphere civilizations, the Mayans were not brought down by the Spanish.

The Golden Age of Mayan civilization was between 250 A.D. and 900 A.D. Understanding what may have led to the collapse of the Mayan civilization means understanding the Mayans themselves. During the peak of their civilization, the Mayans made astounding advances in astronomy, architecture, and their calendar systems. In fact, the Mayans had one of the most complicated calendar systems in the world, based partly on their very accurate understanding of astronomy.

They had two simultaneous calendars: one divided into 18 months of 20 days and another known as the long-count calendar divided into units called b’ak’tun. The latter indicated that a “full cycle of creation” consisted of 13 b’ak’tun, with the last one ending on December 21, 2012. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean the collapse of the world as we know it.

The Mayans had even longer units of measurement that counted millions of years and extended past the 2012 date. In addition to their surprisingly accurate contributions to calendar systems, they built glorious pyramids, some of which remain in sites at Chichen Itza, Tikal, Palenque, and Tulum. Some of these pyramids were actually related to the Mayans’ astronomical research.

Part of the reason Mayans were so intent on accurately cataloging the movements of planets and stars is that they believed the movements of celestial bodies were intricately connected to the desires and actions of the gods. The Mayans believed that life and time were a series of cycles. According to the Popol Vuh, the book that tells a lot of their mythology, the creation of man was also the result of a few cycles.

The Mayans valued many goods differently from what we would expect in the modern day. For example, gold was only important for jewelry and religious items, having no real monetary value in the Mayan world. They didn’t even use coins; instead, they preferred to trade and barter various goods with neighboring groups of people. Even when it came to precious metals and gemstones, jade was valued much more than gold.

In the Mayan world, there was a kind of heaven with 13 different layers and an underworld known as Xibalba, with nine different layers, each ruled by a Death Lord. The souls of the dead had to pass through before ascending to heaven. This was reserved for those killed in sacrifice, either for religious reasons or at the ball court.

Athletic fields have been discovered in Mayan cities in the shape of a capital I. The game was not just for fun and sport; it was intricately connected to Mayan spiritual beliefs. The two teams would consist of two to six players each, and the goal was for the offensive team to get the ball back to the defensive team, preferably through a tiny stone ring in the middle of the court.

Historians believe that the losing team may have been ritually killed in these games or, in their place, a captured lord or king. The collapse of the Mayan civilization didn’t happen overnight; it likely fell over a period of 100 years, with various areas affected at different times.

However, in some locations, it seems like the local inhabitants just got up and left one day. For example, in the ancient city of Bonampak, one of the buildings has gorgeous murals adorning its walls. At some point, the artwork just stops, indicating that artists were still working on it and planning to complete it.

The strange thing is the Mayans themselves didn’t disappear. Their descendants still live in Mexico and Central America today, speaking Mayan languages, most often in addition to Spanish. An estimated seven million people identify as Mayans living throughout Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, parts of Honduras, and the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.

So if the actual people are still here, what happened to their civilization and cities? How did it all disappear? Here are some theories about the demise of the mighty Mayan empire. Historians believe overpopulation may have contributed to the collapse of Mayan cities. The biggest Mayan city at the time, Tikal, reached a population of approximately 50,000 inhabitants at the beginning of the ninth century.

Another theory explains why the fall of the Mayan cities happened relatively quickly in some areas. Researchers have found evidence of a massive and widespread drought in the lowlands around the Mayan cities at the beginning of the ninth century, which coincides with the peak population.

Soil analysis shows that annual rainfall decreased significantly for long periods during this time span. Unfortunately, the drought was likely partly caused by the Mayans’ own practices, especially the final one that led to the civilization’s collapse.

Mayan farmers practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, meaning that to grow the quantities of maize they needed to support an expanding population, they had to clear a significant amount of the surrounding forest. This deforestation likely caused a form of climate change in the immediate vicinity, with rising temperatures and much lower rainfall in the area.

The drought and food shortages could have caused increased infighting, with the state of warfare causing the availability of supplies to dwindle even further. Historians have discovered texts from the ninth century that mention conflicts between cities more frequently than usual.

While various Mayan cities were at war with each other, the movement of troops and various skirmishes would have likely blocked trade routes, drastically decreasing the number of supplies the people could obtain to help their society function.

Thus, it’s likely that a population peak, coupled with drought and food shortages exacerbated by warfare, worked together to quickly destroy the mighty Mayan cities. However, these are not the only theories on the table.

Some Mayan cities—Chichen Itza and Uxmal, for example—continued to flourish for about 150 years after their sister cities had fallen. This leads historians to believe that Uxmal was not only surviving at the time but thriving.

Well into the 10th century, reliefs and inscriptions on the walls of Uxmal show scenes of warfare and human sacrifice. In the 11th century, the same fate started to befall Uxmal and many surrounding cities. New constructions and monuments were left half-finished, and the entire area around Uxmal was completely depopulated.

It seems likely that, in the long term, the Mayans’ agricultural and environmental practices were simply unsustainable and not conducive to supporting an ever-expanding population increasingly concentrated in urban centers.

Though we still don’t know exactly what happened to the Mayans, a combination of man-made drought, overpopulation, warfare, and political instability seem to be the most likely culprits for what brought the once mighty civilization to its knees.

Today, many descendants of the Mayans preserve ancient rituals, customs, modes of dress, farming practices, traditional jewelry making, and even their ancestors’ last names. In certain ways, Mayan culture continues onwards, long after the civilization itself collapsed.

Unfortunately, many indigenous descendants of the Mayans experience discrimination in the countries in which they live.

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This version maintains the educational content while ensuring sensitivity to the audience.