They did not have a single centralised political authority, and this in fact helped them to continue armed resistance until the end of the 19th century.Īlmost all texts on Belizean history have tended to deny or downplay the existence or extent of both the Maya and Spanish presence in Belize before the British came and in subsequent years.
The Maya civilization itself consisted of various distinct groups who inhabited a vast territory. The Maya influenced and were influenced by other indigenous peoples, especially those up to the north, up to central Mexico. Before the Spanish came there were various indigenous societies and civilizations with distinct sociopolitical systems, and many of them shared common features and had contact with each other through trade and war there was a lively exchange of knowledge as well as goods between them. At that time there was no Belize, no Guatemala, no Mexico. when the Spaniards came into contact with the indigenous people in the early 16th century) and for a century and a half later, we must first liberate our minds from the artificial frontiers that were later created, and from the partial histories that have so far been available to us. In the end, some in the public sphere might repeatedly call for humanists and social scientists to get more STEM, but if anything, this most recent article on the Mayan drought and particularly how it has subsequently been reported tell us just the opposite - that STEM needs more humanities and social science.For us to appreciate the extent and the significance of the Maya and Spanish contact period (i.e. After all, you have to be aware of those assumptions and where they come from in order to fight against them. Anderson is sure that the authors of the original Science article would likely be horrified to see their work being used in such a way, yet here we are. Today, millions of people live throughout Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize who are the direct biological descendants of the ancient Maya, many of whom still speak one of the 30 or so Maya languages as their native tongue."ĭiscover has corrected their post (although it still claims the Maya "vanished") and Dr. There were large-scale Maya political entities when the Spanish arrived in the 16th century and the conquest of the last independent Maya kingdom didn't happen until the 18th century. Not only did the Maya not disappear, but they rebounded. To say the Maya 'disappeared' is a 19th-century claim that says the contemporary indigenous inhabitants of Central America couldn't possibly be related to such crafty and industrious people who could build such architecture. " Discover ran an piece claiming we finally know why the Maya 'disappeared.' But that's a loaded word here. How people wrote about the past in the past still haunts us today and this holds true here as well. Mexico (Photo by: myLoupe/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Most likely, it was a number of factors that caused the decline, with the environment being only 1 of them. Anderson, by focusing exclusively on "proving" there was a severe drought this article doesn't account for the problems in linking the drought to a prolonged 200-year decline - a period that's far too long for just 1 thing to be the cause. Evidence has been building for about 20 years to suggest there were significant droughts during this period, so this new study supports those who want to point to drought as the primary mover in the collapse."īut it doesn't really tell us anything we didn't already know, or " it's better resolution on a phenomena that we already had good evidence to say occurred." According to Dr. 800 CE and continues in some places until about 1000 CE. So, the collapse is now seen as an extended phenomena that seems to begin ca. "we’ve learned more and more about this period with additional excavations and paleo climate data. Anderson, a trained archeologist at Radford University who specializes in Mesoamerica and who also works to debunk pseudoarcheology, told me via email that scholars have known about the collapse of Mayan Civilization for about 100 years.
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