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The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse

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David Webster is surely one of the most knowledgeable experts on the Maya, and this book is a mostly useful summary of current knowledge on that fascinating culture and its mysterious demise. Actually, the school of archeology that Webster belongs to has found, with convincing evidence, that after the classic age (ending around AD 900) the Maya did not have a sudden doomsday-like catastrophe that wiped them off the face of the Earth. Instead, slow-moving political pressures related to overpopulation and exhaustion of natural resources led to different city-states falling out of influence at different times, as the Maya very slowly transitioned into a less organized form of society. In fact Maya people still live in the area to this day and organized populations even confronted the Spanish conquistadors, but their "glory days" of huge monuments and designed cities were behind them. This is Webster's basic explanation for the "fall," and in any case he is only talking about the classic period of Maya civilization, rather than the nonsensical disappearance of millions of people.

This is all perfectly fascinating from an archeological standpoint, but the book is frustrating due to Webster's attitudes and writing style. He begins with rather condescending complaints about the supposed ignorance of the public on this subject, possibly turning off beginners who might be reading this book out of informed curiosity. Most importantly, Webster's thinking style is pure academic postmodernism, dwelling primarily on obtuse professorial abstractions like reconstructing texts and inventing historical meta-narratives. Webster spends dozens of pages arguing about the semantics of terms like "civilization" and "city," going off on tangents that will have little interest to anyone outside of professorland. And finally, a very large portion of the book consists of Webster rebutting and debunking other theories about the Maya, and his only way of proving his own theories (however believable they may be) is through a process of elimination and sheer force of will. [~doomsdayer520~]

Webster's book is extremely well written and should appeal to the general reader regardless of their knowledge of Mesoamerican cultures. As opposed to limiting himelf to Late Classic, he relates this to Mayan Civilization at the conquest, what is meant by the collapse of the Mayan "Civilization" and its relations to other ancient civilizations (although I think he missed the analog to the post-fall city-states of Italy and the possible implications). His evidence is excellent and his agruments eloquent. Readers looking for simple answers are warned - you will not find one answer. On the other hand, for those who want a well-thought out argument by a researcher steeped in the Mayan culture, this is your book.

Webster's book seems as if it was a reaction to downgrade the latest "fad" theory on the demise of the Maya,specifically the "Superdrought" theory and I must admit he succeeds well.First he defines what period of Mayan history he is adressing reminding the reader that anyone attempting to explain "the Ancient Mayans" must be very careful on the use of dates and phases as well as geographic locations since Mayan influence encompassed thousands of square miles with radically different climates.Here's some beef,(which Mayans never ate),according to Webster, the Mayans were comprised of 80% peasantry and their diet about 70-80% maize. The time period that Webster addresses is the aprox. 7-8th centuries AD when the "Ancient" Maya and their warrior/priest hierarchy ,complete with the grandiose building projects,collapsed in a span of about 2 centuries.
The chapter I particularly enjoyed was "Many Kingdoms,Many Fates" where Webster breaks down and analyzes the different Mayan cities and puts them in chronological order.Alot of these ruins are separated by hundreds of years and the evidence shows most of them were in conflict with one another over status and influence.In short,Webster offers no "one theory" explain it all solution,but numerous interconnected reasons for the collapse.
Alot of these Mayan cities reached populations that could have been as high as 20,000 then suddenly became more or less,"ghost towns".So what happened according to Webster. He basically says that Mayan agrarian success set the stage for the collapse.The populations of these cities grew to a point where the agrarian economy could not support the urban and outlying residents.As it was,the Mayan cities were "very fragile economies" and as the population grew,nevermind a megadrought,just a simple one month drought could be devastating.Remember the Mayan did not have the plow,or the wheel,and was strictly labor intensive.Webster invests alot of effort in describing what agrarian technologies the Mayans had and which techniques they were sadly lacking in.If you're looking for a simple one theory explanation,this wouldn't be your book.Simply put the Mayan peasantry lost faith in their warrior/priests and left the cities abandoned as they could no longer support a growing urban population.I take it from reading Websters book that "no tears were shed" in regret as they packed up with their empty bellies.While it doesn't say so in the book,I figure that the ecological refugees took along the "best" of the urban culture,such as the art,medicine,and rituals and discarded alot of practices they disagreed with.Thereby,moving into a new phase.I've heard this same phrase so many times to explain a lost civilization.They're never "lost" but just move into another phase,hopefully a better one!

About 800 A.D. the great classical Mayan centers in the Petun region of northern Guatemala and southern Yucatan were suddenly abandoned, never to recover. Maya civilization continued, in a reduced form, in the northern Yucatan which is where the Spanish discovered the Mayas in the early 16th century.

If you're going to name the seven wonders of the world -- as some magazine is doing -- the spectacular Mayan ruin of Tikal should be on the list. The jungles around Tikal, the greatest of all the classical Mayan cities, are uncongenial to a large human population and the mystery has always been how the Maya were able to create a civilization in such an environment and why the civilization after six centuries disappeared suddenly. The author examines about a dozen different theories as to why Tikal, Copan, and other Mayan centers abruptly ceased to be populated.

This is a book that begins slowly and gets better as you progress. I zipped through the first few chapters, which included long definitions of civilization, urbanization, etc. and finally began to get interested with chapter Six (page 178) in which the author finally gets down to discussing what he promised: the decline and fall of Maya civilization. The remainder of the book is good. The author discusses the factors that led to the decline of Tikal, Copan, La Milpa and other centers. I won't reveal his conclusions -- other than to say that he comes down heavily on environmental degradation. That is in accord with current popular and politically-correct wisdom on the subject.

The book is complemented by a number of good photographs drawings and graphs, and ample maps showing the locations of the many, many Mayan ruins in Middle America. Unfortunately, our understanding of the Maya will always be deficient because of the destruction of nearly all their written records and culture by their Spanish overlords. Our assumptions and conclusions regarding this mysterious civilization may be wrong -- and the paucity of solid data gives rein to the most interesting of speculations.

Smallchief

Like many a good scientist, David Webster demythologizes with facts knowing that detailed scientific fact is often more fascinating than myth.

Webster tells of the 'Maya myth' growing out of the first discoveries of the mysterious vine-covered ruins, with their "vacant ceremonial centers," ruins that create the eerie impression of a civilization abandoned almost overnight. By the 1940s the Classic Lowland Maya had "become a kind of intellectual Shangri-La for our wishful thinking about the past and about the human condition."

A big part of the myth was that of the 'peaceful Maya,' a wishful notion that became awkward to maintain after archeologists inconveniently began to uncover extensive military fortifications.

But myth is stubborn. Webster recalls that once on a flight to one of his archeological sites he ran across an airline magazine article with the typical popular emoting, telling how the Maya had 'built palaces with 100 or more rooms, while Europeans lived in mud huts.' The problem is, Webster points out, that while many Europeans lived in mud huts, so did most Maya, and that the advanced civilizations of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans pre-dated that of the Classic Maya.

Political correctness always tends to patronize and diminish those groups it intends to uplift. Surely the Maya achieved enough--the art, the architecture, the hieroglyphics, the socially complex kingdoms, the extensive agricultural economy, all accomplished in an equatorial environment-to make exaggeration unnecessary. (Obviously any new information that might be uncovered showing the Maya more, or less, "advanced" than presently believed should be welcomed as helping to further puzzle out the truth.)

It turns out that even the Maya "collapse" is something of a myth. Webster reminds us that the Classic Maya were part of a larger culture that continues today, and that there were several geographically separate kingdoms that experienced "mini-collapses" long before the final fall.

Webster also answers PC academicians who charge that the whole concept of societal evolution, of simpler societies evolving into more complex or advanced ones, is really just ethnocentric racist Social Darwinism attempting to excuse the West's exploitation of traditional cultures: "More than a century of archaeological research in many parts of the world has documented something very much like ... cultural evolution." Politically correct politics aside, Webster writes, "Cultural evolution, like biological evolution, is a fact, how ever it happens, whether we like it or not, and despite whatever lessons we wish to learn from it."

Webster lists some of the characteristics of collapsing civilizations: Less stratification; less political centralization; less regimentation; decreased exchanges of information and resources; population decline; settlement abandonment; diminished production of Great Tradition components; invasions; diminished confidence in or even rejection of collectively held ideas and values ... (Hmm, last few sound familiar.)

Population decline and growth seem particularly tricky. Even when massive population growth is on the eve, historically speaking, of overwhelming a society's natural-resource base, soon to bring about economic, political and population collapse, to those who are experiencing the final "boom," population growth must seem an open-ended blessing. One thinks of today's continual press characterizations of our Third-World-like post-1965 immigration-generated population growth as being merrily "robust."

One of the many strengths of this book is that Webster seems to have no ideological ax to grind. He systematically takes his readers through the various past attempts at explaining the Maya collapse, from monument construction being too burdensome on peasants, to the disintegration of trade networks, and shows many of them to be wanting.

So what did happen to the Maya? Read this very fine book.

Finally, any volume devoted to civilizational collapse, particularly such an outstanding one as this, is doubly interesting to those who are concerned about the decline of our own civilization.

A big part of the problem for the Maya was environmental, and the environmental Malthusian warning bells are with us today, in fact, ear-shatteringly so. But what do we make of political elites of European-based nations, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and of course Europe itself, who view their rapid replacement by people of some other cultural, ethnic, or racial stock, through immigration and offspring, as not only acceptable, but as fulfilling some glittering vision of the future, or as one Immigration and Naturalization Commissioner gushed, "a wonderful transformation"?

Of course, what happened to the Maya only parallels some of our own dysfunctions, but one seemingly bizarre category of civilizational collapse cataloged separately by Webster catches the eye: a collapse brought about by "ideological pathology."

This is illustrated by the case of the African Xhosa.

"Late in the summer of 1856 the Xhosa, a Bantu-speaking people of southeast Africa, began to methodically kill their cattle, horses, goats, sheep, and foul. They also consumed or threw away all the grain in their storage bins and stopped preparations to plant crops." These things were not done grudgingly, but in celebration. Why?

They had listened to the prophecies of a girl who claimed to hear messages from beyond, telling her that once her people had stripped themselves down to nothing "the world would be reborn." Of course what actually happened was that "untold thousands starved" in one of the "greatest self-inflected immolation in all of history."

The case of the Xhosa "shows that under extraordinary circumstances whole societies can virtually will themselves out of existence."

Mr. Webster does not make it easy for those who want to read about flying saucers sweeping down and doing/undoing the Maya. His tale is a little bit more down to earth as he undertakes to make sure that the reader understands first a few parameters on how cultures grow and meet their demise. Eventually when you read the sections that actually try to explain how the Maya fell, you sort of guess stuff before he tells you. Probably this comes from a Socratic style of teaching from Professor Webster. It also does not help that he can be tongue in cheek sometimes, and deliberately challenging when he confess that he cannot read Mayan glyphs. Is he serious? After a while this has a salutatory effect: the reader realizes that there is no magical mystery to the Maya: they were just like any other civilization, just a little bit odd. They were humans first and that explains very well why they became great and why they also harbored the seeds of their decline. The only mystery here is the mystery of human genius that made this people build such exquisite ensembles as Tikal, or the author's favorite Copan. Definitely a clear book on what are the current thoughts on Maya history based on recent archaeology, a non sentimental look on the Maya, and the best exposition so far to demonstrate that the Maya demise was not as sudden as people would like to think. Also a very salutary reminder that today natives are the descendents of these fabled rulers and that if they stopped building pyramids it was not because they became stupid and degenerated. The truth might be that they just saw the light and kicked the ruling class out when they realized that they had become a burden they could not afford anymore. Clearly, in spite of serious political and ecological problems, the Maya that "greeted" Cortez were the heirs of the ancient Maya.

This book came to delivery point very fast (three days) and was in excellent condition as advertised. This was a used book and advertised to be "like new."

Very good service!

Most hard-line academics cannot write for a geneal audience. Their style is so narrowly focused, their scientific sensitivities are so acute, and their language is so stiff that they can't communicate to a general audience. Even when they succeed, they often fall prey to jealous and carping colleagues.
Although Professor Webster is not Carl Sagan his writing is OK for non-specialists. Still, this is a rather dull book about a very interesting subject. Why?

Unlike, "Graham Hancock." Webster wants to retain his scientific credibility as well as telling a rip-roaring story. Webster worries about topics such as, what defines "civilzation," what defines, "city," What defines "state," When you say "Fall" what do you mean exactly? This stuff is important because there is a case that the Mayans never "Fell." Therefore, some parts of the book will puzzle general readers who do not worry about "definitions." If you want excitement, this is not the book. If you want to read an up to date, cautious, "i was there in Yucatan," version of fieldwork, this book is fine.

Webster invested about 20 years of his life digging up the artefacts left by the Mayans. Moreover, he has had lots of help from many other archaelogists working in the same region. I was surpised by the debates among archaeologists, given the weak nature of their evidence. It seems to me that the archaeologists are stretching their theories far, far, beyond their evidence. Early archaeologists made flagrantly mistaken judgments about the Mayans. I don't see how a few buildings and some gyphs plus bones can explain political structures. For my money, archeology only makes sense as part of an interdisciplinary context, not alone.

Naturally I do not want to give away the surprise ending. But those of you who read this book should also read Jared Diamond.

The author is an archeological hole-digger who supposes virtually no influence to the great Mayan demise attributed to spiritual matters, in an age of myth-driven superstition, sacrifice, and supplication. He suggests crop decline due to overpopulation lead to the collapse of the Mayan hierarchy. But since when does a shaman or spiritual guide come up short on reasons for things working out differently than expected? Its part of the trade to divert fault. Pacifying peasants through guile, blame, god's will, or brute military force is as much part of the landscape as carved stone.

The evidence of agricultural decline is not well demonstrated. The author devotes more research into refuting other claims than proving his own, particularly agricultural decline in a luxuriant rainforest setting. We see no soil study evidence, no pollen counts by century, no clear evidence of crop decline, little nutritional evidence from human remains. This is a culture that was rotating crops hundreds of years before.

The author laments that some sites lack detailed records of events compared to others, but the reader has little evidence of where this occurs since modest historical information is displayed in any case, other than lists of ambiguous rulers associated with various monuments. Nearly all the written records and books of this early civilization were systematically destroyed by Catholic bishop Diego de Landa, who sought to drive out pagan influences in about 1523. There are few incidents in history were more valuable evidence was lost for posterity. Little remains since possession of books was punished with rather unchristian methods.

Ultimately the author struggles on several levels. His data is mostly repetitious and dull - endless population density claims that ultimately prove little. The academic writing style is tedious; "...the active demand of two or more organisms for the same limited resources..." is as close to a battle scene as you'll get. The assumption is that the reader is well aware of the rich cultural history of the region so we need not bother with general background. And, ultimately, his failure to prove his contention that population growth led to overused agricultural resources to the point of malnutrition, resulting in political destabilization and the collapse of the ruling hierarchy. And yet, while he implies there are as many causes as sites that declined, he offers a single thesis. He mostly holds his own conclusions and opinions until late in the book, to build a story, I guess, but it is ineffective and cumbersome. Overall, this just isn't very satisfying, even if you have a curiosity of what happened to the ancient Mayan. If you are reading this prior to a visit to the region for insight and historical perspective, this is clearly the wrong source. In its favor, it is a recent publication, so the materials are current. And he may be right about all his contentions, but they weren't proven to my satisfaction. Read John L. Stephens for the Indian Jones adventure of it all and don't worry about the bone diggers, the real story isn't ready for release.

Webster's book is a good review of the Collapse theories forwarded to explain the demise of the Classic Maya. While Webster covers all of the relevant arguments in the literature, this book does not cover much new ground. Further, his discussion of the Copan data ignores the possibility of a complete Maya depopulation of Copan at the end of the Classic Period suggested by non-Maya Early Postclassic structures reported from the site center.