Why the Mayans Disappeared Wally, Samantha, Daniel, And Christina

Why Did the Mayans Disappear? The cause of their disappearance is unknown. There are multiple theories of how the Mayans disappeared. There are debates on which theory is correct.

Are There Any Mayans Left Today? There are about seven million Mayans left today. The Mayans live in Central America. They speak their own languages. Many still write in their own languages. The descendants live as shop owners and merchants.

Some Theories (There are many more) Overpopulation- The Mayans were a very successful civilization, and accomplished many things like improved agriculture. This caused a rise in population, and the increased food consumption could have easily depleted the Mayans food sources quickly. Food depletion could have caused the Mayans to evacuate their tired land and move to more agriculturally diverse new areas with fresh soil. Invasion- Invasion was a real threat back then, when many different people were starting their own civilizations, and trying to gain power. If the Mayans didn’t control this invasion, another culture could start warring for land and power. If another civilization won, invaders might have killed most native Mayans. After they did this, they could have pulled out after looting the palaces. Mayan culture would then be abandoned. Peasant Revolt- I wouldn’t think that peasants would revolt, as the people were all united under one god. The Mayan king was considered to have the rank of a god. However, if the peasants did revolt, there would most likely be many more peasants than higher ranking guards. So it is possible that peasants overthrew the king, and soon after, with no government, the peasant government would collapse. Collapse of Trade Routes- If the Mayans didn’t have easy access to important resources that they needed like obsidian or similar stones, populations would decrease sharply without the needed resources.

How Their Civilization Came to an End To repeat what all the other slides have said, no one really knows how the Mayans came to an end. Evidence shows that the massive stone cities were abandoned, seemingly all in a short period of time. We know they were very religious, and designed calendars with doom days on them. Maybe they decided to all move or commit suicide on one of those doom dates. This is one theory that I came up with brainstorming about possibilities of Mayan civilization collapse. I came up with this idea using educated guesses based on previous knowledge from reading and researching the web. Cite, Wally Chang

Interesting Facts Although people believe that mayans completely disappeared, there are still over 7 million Mayans living in their home regions: the Mexican states of Yecatán, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Chiapas, Belize, Guatemala, and western Honduras and El Salvador. Mayan centers declined during the 8th-9th centuries. Different theories of the Mayan decline are “overpopulation, invasion, peasant revolt, the collapse of key trade routes” or the ecological hypotheses like “environmental disaster, epidemic disease, and climate change.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOckLspTwGA

Works Cited http://www.answers.com/Q/Are_the_mayan_Indians_still_alive_today? www.history.com/topics/maya https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOckLspTwGA http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/Maya/p/What-Happened-To-The-Ancient-Maya.htm http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/27/maya-history-trade-collapse_n_1542842.html