Where did the Mayans go: the mystery of a vanished civilization. Origins and occupations of the ancient people of Mesoamerica

The ancient Mayan civilization arose in the first millennium BC and reached its peak around 600 AD. The ruins of thousands of settlements have been found throughout South America. But why did civilization decline? Scientists agree that the reason for this was some kind of large-scale catastrophe, possibly related to climate.

Sweet Mayan Pyramid

The Rise and Decline of the Maya

Numerous archaeological finds indicate that they mastered various crafts, including architectural skills. They were also familiar with mathematics and astronomy, which they used in the construction of temples and pyramids. In addition, they had writing in the form of hieroglyphs.

However, around 850, the Mayans began to abandon their cities. In less than two centuries, only a few isolated settlements remained, which were discovered by the Spanish in 1517. It was not difficult for the colonists to destroy the remnants of the ancient culture at the roots.

"Drought" curse

What happened to the Maya, since the decline occurred in the pre-Columbian era? Many versions have been put forward, among them - civil war, invasion of hostile tribes, loss of trade routes... Only in the early 90s of the last century, after studying the chronicles, it was suggested that the cause was... a banal drought!

It turned out that from about 250 to 800, Mayan cities flourished, their inhabitants reaped rich harvests thanks to abundant rains... But somewhere from 820 onwards, droughts hit the region, lasting for decades. This period just coincided with the beginning of the Mayan collapse.

True, not all cities were abandoned immediately. In the 9th century, people left mainly from settlements located in the southern part of the country, in the territory of modern Guatemala and Belize. But the population of the Yucatan Peninsula, on the contrary, was flourishing. The famous Chichen Itza and some other northern Mayan centers continued to flourish in the 10th century.

Unfortunately, scientists have been forced to struggle with this riddle for quite a long time. Most of the manuscripts were destroyed by Spanish colonialists on the orders of the Catholic Inquisition. Information could only be obtained from calendar records on the sites, analysis of ceramics, and radiocarbon dating of organic materials.

Last December, archaeologists from Britain and the USA were finally able to bring together all the available data and analyze the situation. It turned out that the northern territories also suffered due to droughts, but not immediately. So, at first construction from wood decreased. Rainfall increased briefly in the 10th century and there was a brief flourishing again. However, then droughts returned, and between 1000 and 1075 there was another sharp decline in production - in particular in construction and stone carving.

The 11th century brought even more severe droughts. Researchers believe that this was the driest period in the 2,000 years since the birth of Christ, and even dubbed it a “megadrought.” Precipitation fell steadily from 1020 to 1100. If the north, unlike the south, was somehow able to survive the first wave of droughts, then the Mayans never recovered from the second wave.

True, several settlements still continued to exist - for example, Mayapan in the north flourished in the 13th-15th centuries. But the classic Mayan “megacities” turned into ruins.

Ecological disaster

Obviously, the aridity of the climate led to a drop in yields. But the Mayan economy directly depended on agriculture. Economic problems led, in turn, to social cataclysms. Food supplies decreased, a struggle for resources began, which fragmented the state.

"We know that Maya territory experienced increasing military and sociopolitical instability as a result of droughts in the 9th century," says Julie Hoggart of Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

One way or another, after 1050 the Mayans left the lands of their ancestors and headed to the Caribbean coast and other places where there could be sources of water and fertile lands.

By the way, some experts believe that the Mayans themselves unwittingly became the culprits of disastrous droughts. They actively intervened in natural environment, in particular, built a gigantic canal system hundreds of kilometers wide, which allowed them to drain wetlands and turn them into arable land. In addition, they cut down huge tracts of forest to build cities and cultivate arable land. This could lead to local droughts, which, combined with natural changes climate change turned into a real disaster...

Many geographical discoveries Europeans ended with the colonization of new lands and the brutal suppression or even extermination of local peoples. This was the case with the discovery of the Yucatan Peninsula and the Mayan culture.

In fact, historians are primarily interested in the fate of civilizations. At the same time, very few of them pay attention to the natural causes that led to the degradation and death of this or that civilization. It is usually believed that the main culprits are neighboring states or warlike conquering tribes, as well as newcomers from Europe.

However, it was not so easy to explain the collapse of Mayan culture by such reasons. It turned out that in this case it is necessary to take into account geographical factors and conduct paleogeographic studies. They, in turn, shed light on the complex set of reasons that affect any society, because it is in indissoluble unity with the natural environment.

But first we need to go back to the 16th century. After the unsuccessful expedition of Francisco Cordoba, a new campaign was organized under the command of Juan Grijalva - on four ships with 240 soldiers. The chief helmsman was Alaminos, and one of the participants was Bernal Diaz. This time they landed first on a coastal island, and then on the mainland - on the northeastern outskirts of Yucatan, west of Cordoba.

After armed clashes with the Indians, Grijalva managed to establish trade with them, receiving food and a small amount of low-grade gold products. Local residents pointed to the west, making it clear that there was a lot of gold there, and repeating the word “Mexico City”. But even without that there was a lot of gold, because the Emperor of Mexico, the Aztec leader Montezuma, ordered not to interfere with the advance of the newcomers and to exchange the yellow metal, which they loved so much, for their goods.

And this time the Spaniards had a chance to see altars covered in human blood, terrible idols. They saw the bodies of victims with severed arms and legs, open chests. Diaz saw one of the bloody rituals: “That day they sacrificed two boys, cut their chests and put their bloody hearts as a gift to their dirty god. They wanted to fumigate us, but we didn’t give in. We were very shocked by the sight of those so cruelly slaughtered boys."

This time the expedition examined the coast of Yucatan for about 1000 km, finally making sure that it was a peninsula. The brought cargo of gold inflamed the passions of the conquistadors, who learned about the existence rich country on the continent. This marked the beginning of the discovery, conquest and destruction of the Aztec and Mayan empires. (However, Spain and Portugal, which initially flourished on captured gold, eventually relegated their economies to the second-class level in Europe.)

A question arises that is also relevant for our era: why did the great civilizations of the New World collapse relatively quickly? If the states of the Incas and Aztecs were at the height of power and culture, small detachments of conquistadors would not have been able to conquer them. This is confirmed by the events that accompanied the discovery of Yucatan by Europeans. But in this case, the conquistadors were opposed by the rather savage descendants of the great Mayans, who had once created the most accurate ancient world calendar.

They were amazing people. It remains a mystery how they were able to correctly determine the length of the year without optical instruments and centuries-old astronomical observations. The Mayan hieroglyphic writing is so complex that it still causes controversy among experts and cannot be deciphered in all respects. In mathematics, these people were the first to introduce the concept of zero. They own original cultural monuments, colorful paintings, and magnificent architectural structures.

The most fantastic versions have been expressed about the origin of the Mayans. Bartolomeo Las Casas suggested that these were descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel mentioned in the Bible, who, after being defeated by the Assyrian king Sargon II, moved to the New World. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdez was sure that the surviving inhabitants of the sunken Atlantis moved to Yucatan. However, the opinion of Diego de Landa was confirmed: the Mayan culture developed and flourished on local soil.

Historians have tried unsuccessfully to unravel the mystery of the death of the Mayan culture. Soil scientists, ecologists and paleogeographers joined them. They found out some interesting facts. It turns out that in Yucatan the upper soil horizons are weakened and depleted of nutrients. The reason for this was established: the long dominance of slash-and-burn agriculture. In periodically - after 10-12 years - burned areas, the soil did not have time to restore fertility and was constantly depleted and degraded. Crop failures, famine, and population extinction began.

The wonderful biogeographer N.I., who visited these parts. Vavilov wrote: “The absence of farm animals forced man to limit the sowing area to small plots, carefully cultivate small areas, develop unique skills in caring for plants... Many varieties of corn, beans, papaya, fruit and cotton have reached great perfection here.”

It later became clear that the Mayans practiced more than just slash-and-burn agriculture. They built agricultural terraces and irrigation structures. As historian V.I. writes Gulyaev: “In two months of work, the Maya farmer of the classical period produced such an amount of food that covered all the needs of his family for the year, as well as taxes and tributes paid by the community to the ruling caste. He spent the remaining time on all kinds of household activities and crafts, hunting and served his labor service in the construction of temples, palaces and other public buildings."

It was at that time that the majestic Mayan pyramids were erected. Like all Cyclopean structures, they testify to the flourishing of civilization, the awareness of the people and rulers of their power.

The priesthood was intellectual elite society, the keeper of secret knowledge. According to Diego de Landa, the Mayan high priest “appointed priests in the villages when there was a need, testing them in sciences and ceremonies, and entrusted them with affairs according to their position, obliging them to be good example for the people, providing them with books and sending them to their places. And these priests were engaged in serving in temples and teaching their sciences, as well as writing religious books. They gave their students knowledge about the following things: chronology, festivals and ceremonies, administration of the sacraments, unlucky days and cycles, methods of predicting them, prophecies, memorable events, cures for various diseases, ancient monuments, how to read and write their hieroglyphs and drawings."

As calendar experts, the priests indicated the dates of agricultural work. In the tropics, where seasons are almost indistinguishable, such information was vital for rational farming.

Priests and rulers practically took responsibility for everything that happened in the country. Constant references to higher powers, divine instructions during natural disasters - severe droughts, earthquakes or tropical cyclones - turned into social conflicts: it turned out that the gods were dissatisfied with what was happening on earth and were angry at the earthly rulers. Riots broke out. Faith in priests was lost. Perhaps, having acquired power over society, the priesthood itself degenerated, stupidly performing rituals, losing the meaning of knowledge, not caring about checking or clarifying it.

On top of everything, this caste of “keepers of knowledge and sacraments” hid their knowledge and secrets from the rest of the people. And when, during social catastrophes and uprisings, the priests were destroyed or expelled, this eventually turned into economic decline: there was no one to keep the calendar, determine the timing of sowing and other agricultural work. Information, a valuable public asset, was lost. This dealt a blow to the entire economic system.

It is possible that even without this, the priesthood, closing itself off as a privileged caste, lost the very essence of skills and rituals, mindlessly repeating the same thing, observing formal instructions automatically. And as you know, thoughtless repetition of information devalues ​​it.

The great Mayan civilization could not maintain its achievements high level culture. And if a social organism does not develop, if it turns into a kind of inert mechanism, if intellectual activity freezes in it, then it begins to degrade relatively quickly. Moreover, in the Mayan Empire, the isolation of individual castes and regions, city-states grew, the unity of society was lost, and intellectual potential and vital energy decreased. And all this happened against the backdrop of decreasing soil fertility and increasing desertification.

The Mayan civilization is one of the few that went through a full natural development cycle: formation, growth, flourishing, stability, decline and death. The last phase was completed by the conquistadors. Using this instructive example, one can study the features of the interaction of environmental, social, economic and intellectual factors in public life. Now that technical civilization has become global, the example of the Mayans is especially valuable. After all, our global civilization is becoming more and more monotonous - following the American model.

...The discovery of Yucatan and then Mexico by Europeans turned into a tragedy for the local population. The newcomers craved only material values, not paying attention to spiritual values. Many monuments of the spiritual culture of the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas were destroyed. In fact, it was only in the 20th century that active research into these disappeared civilizations began and it became clear, first of all, environmental factors their degradation. This was already a discovery in the field of historical geography and social ecology. This scientific discovery as yet, perhaps, not appreciated and remains unfinished. This is a vast field for new research, the results of which can be extremely fruitful and relevant.

Geologists have discovered why the Mayan civilization died

MEXICO CITY, December 31. According to a new study, the sudden disappearance ancient civilization Mesoamerica was contributed to by two severe droughts in the Yucatan Peninsula. To prove their case, the scientists took mineral samples from the Great Blue Hole and nearby lagoons in Belize, as well as soil samples from several other sites in the heart of the Mayan civilization.

Study co-author Andre Droxler of Rice University said that scientists have for the first time been able to convincingly prove the climate version of the Mayan decline. And although drought is not the only reason for the death of a highly developed culture ancient people, she definitely played a fatal role in his fate, reports “My Planet”.

The Mayan civilization flourished in the Yucatan Peninsula in the 300-700s AD. e. During this period, pyramids and sakbe roads were built, people mastered astronomy, created their own writing systems, counting, time calculation and the legendary calendar. However, already in the 9th century, a rapid population decline occurred in the southern Mayan areas, which subsequently spread to the entire central Yucatan. Residents are leaving cities, and water supply systems are falling into disrepair.

Scientists have discovered that during the collapse of the Mayan civilization (800-1000s), the number of tropical cyclones decreased threefold: from five or six to one or two every 20 years. After this, the Mayans moved north. In the 1000-1100s, severe drought set in again: it was during this period that residents left the destroyed Chichen Itza and other northern cities. Since the middle of the 10th century, people no longer erected stone structures.

Until now, the disappearance of the Mayan civilization has been a subject of debate among scientists. The hypothesis of a climate version of the Mayan decline is supported not only by research led by Droxler, but also by earlier analyzes of sedimentary rocks collected in Belize - geologists have been collecting evidence of drought in this region since 1995.

Scientists believe the main cause of the drought is shifts in the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), a system that normally directs precipitation to the tropical regions of the planet, drying out the subtropics. In the summer, the ITCZ ​​rains on the Yucatan, but during the decline of the Maya, scientists believe that the associated monsoons may not have reached the peninsula at all.

The scarcity of rainfall led to the decline of the agriculture that supported the cities, and then, most likely, came famine and internecine conflicts. “When a drought of this magnitude sets in, famine and unrest are inevitable,” Droxler explains.

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Clear confirmation has been found of the hypothesis of an environmental catastrophe that led to the disappearance of the Mayan civilization.

Contrary to popular belief about the destruction of the Mayan civilization by the Spanish conquistadors, the empire fell into decline five hundred years before Columbus's voyages. In the middle of the 10th century, the construction of magnificent pyramids and temples stopped, the cities were abandoned by the inhabitants, and by the time the Europeans appeared, the entire “empire” was already small, scattered settlements, constantly fighting among themselves and with nomads.

Two hypotheses have been proposed about the reasons for the disappearance of the great civilization. Firstly, defeat in wars with another Central American people - the Toltecs. The second hypothesis considers an environmental disaster caused by the use of a primitive slash-and-burn farming system. And indeed, according to Mayan texts deciphered by the great Russian linguist Yuri Knorozov, every three to four years they had to abandon old crop areas and burn out the jungle for new ones. In addition, huge amounts of wood were required to burn limestone and produce building lime. As a result of deforestation, the structure of the soil changed, droughts began and yields of corn, the Mayan monoculture, sharply decreased.

Recently, strong arguments have emerged in favor of this hypothesis. According to the website membrana.ru, American biologists David Lenz and Brian Hockaday examined 135 samples of wooden structures from 6 temples and 2 palaces ancient city Tikal. It turned out that every year wood of worse quality was used in construction. Eventually, the builders replaced the large, straight sapodilla logs with short, gnarled logwood trunks. It is obvious that the sapodilla (a local evergreen tree) has simply already been cut down.

After the appearance of the conquistadors, previously unknown diseases and persecution of the Inquisition were added to the environmental woes of the Mayans, but the people did not die out completely, and now there are more than 6 million Mayans - they live in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. The jungle has long been restored, many tourists come to see the pyramids, and the Mayans sell them ancient, ancient figurines with the Made in China label torn off.

Mayan writing:

Mayan mythology. Among the Mayans, knowledge and religion were inseparable from one another and constituted a single worldview, which was reflected in their art. Ideas about the diversity of the surrounding world were personified in the images of numerous deities, which can be combined into several main groups corresponding to different spheres of human experience: gods of hunting, gods of fertility, gods of various elements, gods of heavenly bodies, gods of war, gods of death, and so on. At different periods of Mayan history, certain gods may have had different significance for their worshipers.
The Mayans believed that the universe consisted of 13 heavens and 9 underworlds. In the center of the earth there was a tree that passed through everything celestial spheres. On each of the four sides of the earth there was another tree, symbolizing the cardinal points - a mahogany tree corresponded to the east, a yellow tree to the south, a black tree to the west, and a white tree to the north. Each side of the world had several gods (wind, rain and heaven holders) who had a corresponding color. One of the important gods of the Maya of the classical period was the god of corn, represented in the guise of a young man with a high headdress. By the time the Spaniards arrived, another important deity was Itzamna, represented as an old man with a hooked nose and a goatee. As a rule, images of Mayan deities included a variety of symbolism, indicating the complexity of thinking of the customers and performers of sculptures, reliefs or drawings. So, the sun god had large crooked fangs, his mouth was outlined by a strip of circles. The eyes and mouth of the other deity are depicted as coiled snakes, etc. Among the female deities, especially significant, judging by the codes, was the “red goddess,” the wife of the rain god; she was painted with a snake on her head and with the paws of some kind of predator instead of legs. Itzamna's wife was the moon goddess Ish-Chel; it was believed to help with childbirth, weaving and medicine. Some Mayan gods were represented in the form of animals or birds: jaguar, eagle. During the Toltec period of Mayan history, the veneration of deities of Central Mexican origin spread among them. One of the most respected gods of this kind was Kukulkan, in whose image elements of the god Quetzalcoatl of the Nahua peoples are clear.
Currently, most scientists accept and recognize the following Mayan mythological deities: the god of rain and lightning - Chaak (Chaak or Chac); the god of death and ruler of the world of the dead - Ah Puch; god of death - Kimi (Cimi); lord of the sky - Itzamna; god of trade - Ek Chuah; goddess of sacrifices and ritual suicides - Ish-Tab (IxTab); goddess of the rainbow and moonlight - Ish-Chel (IxChel); the riding god, the feathered serpent of Quetzal - Kukulkan (Gukumatz); god of corn and forests - Jum Kaash; god of fire and thunder - Huracan; demon underworld- Zipacna and others.
An example of Mayan mythology of the pre-Hispanic period is provided by the epic of one of the peoples of Guatemala, the Quiche, “Popol Vuh”, preserved from colonial times. It contains stories of the creation of the world and people, the origin of the twin heroes, their struggle with the underground rulers, etc. The veneration of deities among the Mayans was expressed in complex rituals, part of which were sacrifices (including human ones) and playing ball. Chichen Itza had a ball court, the largest in all of Mexico. It was closed on two sides by walls, and on two more sides by temples. The game of ball was not just a sporting competition. Many archaeological discoveries indicate that it was clearly associated with human sacrifice. On the walls enclosing the site, beheaded people are depicted in relief. There are 3 platforms around the site: the Venus (Quetzalcoatl) platform with the tomb of Chac-Mool, the Eagle and Jaguar platform with the Jaguar Temple, and the Skulls platform. Huge statues of Chak-Mool depict him reclining, with a sacrificial dish on his stomach. On the platform of the Skulls there were stakes on which the severed heads of the victims were strung. Mayan writing. For a long time The Mayans were believed to be the inventors of writing and the calendar system. However, after similar but older signs were found in places farther away from the Mayan region, it became apparent that the Mayans had inherited some elements from earlier cultures.
Mayan writing was of the hieroglyphic type. Mayan hieroglyphs were preserved in 4 manuscripts (the so-called Mayan codes, three in Dresden, Madrid, Paris, the fourth codex was partially preserved); they give either images of figures, or are connected in groups of 4 or 6 hieroglyphs above the figured images. Calendar signs and numbers accompany the entire text. Schellgas (in “Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie”, 1886) and Seler (in “Verhandlungen der Berliner Anthropologischen Gesellschaft” and in “Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie”, 1887) did a lot to analyze hieroglyphs.
The latter proved that groups of hieroglyphs are composed of one hieroglyph relating to the action depicted in the picture below them, another - hieroglyphically meaning the corresponding god, and 2 more, communicating the attributes of the god. The hieroglyphs themselves are not compounds of elements representing a known sound or sound combination, but almost exclusively ideograms. Paul Schellgas systematized the images of Mayan deities in three codes: Dresden, Madrid and Paris. Shellgas's list of deities consists of fifteen Mayan gods. He identified most of the hieroglyphs directly related to these deities and denoting their names and epithets.
As a rule, the texts ran in parallel with graphic image plot. With the help of writing, the Mayans could record long texts of various contents. Thanks to the efforts of several generations of researchers, it became possible to read ancient texts. A significant contribution was made by our compatriot, Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov, whose first publications on this topic appeared in the early 1950s. In 1963 he published the monograph “The Writing of the Maya Indians.” It reproduced in facsimile the texts of the surviving Mayan manuscripts (codes), compiled, perhaps, even before the Spanish Conquest, in the 12-15 centuries. and named after the cities in which they are now stored - Dresden, Madrid and Paris. The book also outlined the principles of decipherment, a catalog of hieroglyphs, a dictionary of the language of the Yucatan Maya of the early colonial period, and a grammar of the Mayan language. In 1975, in the book “Hieroglyphic Mayan Manuscripts,” Knorozov proposed reading the manuscripts and their translations into Russian. The texts of the codes turned out to be a kind of manual for priests with a list of rituals, sacrifices and predictions related to different types Mayan economies and to all social strata of the population, except slaves. Brief Descriptions The activities of the gods served as instructions on what to do for the corresponding groups of inhabitants. In turn, the priests, guided by descriptions of the actions of the deities, could set the time for rituals, sacrifices, and the implementation of certain works; they could also predict the future.
Mayan calendar To calculate time, the Mayans used a complex calendar system that included several cycles. One of them represented a combination of numbers from 1 to 13 (“week”) and 20 “months”, which had their own names. A solar calendar with a year of 365 days was also in use. It consisted of 18 months of 20 days and five “extra” or “unlucky” days. In addition, the Mayans used the so-called long count, which, in addition to a 20-day month and an 18-month year, took into account a 20-year period (katun); a period of 20 katuns (baktun) and so on. There were other dating methods. All of these methods changed over time, making it much more difficult to correlate the dates recorded by the Mayans with European chronology.

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Following the rediscovery of Mayan rainforest cities, researchers and archaeologists began to debate the cause of their decline. It is not surprising that, given the current state of these once great cities, many Europeans and Americans initially strongly rejected the very idea of ​​​​a civilization thriving in the wilds of the tropical rain forest. They concluded that the decline of the Mayan cities was inevitable in such unfavorable conditions. natural conditions and that civilization could never have arisen there by itself. From their point of view, the Mayans were colonists from other places - from Mexico to Egypt or China. Nowadays, archaeologists are not inclined to perceive the rain forest as an environment hostile to human habitation, and do not at all object to the local origin of the Maya Indians.

Another explanation, popular in early writings about the collapse of the Maya civilization, was the sudden natural disaster. The silent cities, swallowed up by the rainforest, really gave the impression that they had been abandoned in a hurry: people fled the disaster and never returned. Several Mayan cities, including Quirigua, were actually subject to earthquakes, and in Xunantunija one of the palaces that suffered significant damage from the earthquake was never rebuilt. However, in most major Maya centers (located quite far from the fault lines earth's crust) there are no signs of damage from earthquakes.

Epidemic diseases such as bubonic plague in medieval Europe, led to mass death and severe social unrest. Yellow fever has been suggested as one of the reasons for the Maya's withdrawal from the cities on the low plains, although the disease does not appear to have been very common in the New World before 1492. Such an explanation is possible in principle, but we have no physical evidence to support the theory of an epidemic disease: neither numerous skeletons of dead people, nor mass graves of epidemic victims.

Caribbean hurricanes often swept over the Mayan lowlands, devastating large areas of agricultural land. The themes of hurricanes and disease are intertwined in the hypothesis that a devastating maize virus reached the coastal lowlands, carried from the eastern Caribbean by hurricane-force winds, and destroyed the maize crops on which the Mayans depended for their prosperity. As a leading authority on Mayan history, Professor Robert Scherer of the University of Pennsylvania, points out:

“The idea that the transient and relatively localized effects of hurricanes can cause the decline of an entire civilization is quite difficult to stomach. Deforestation in the path of a hurricane may even have had a beneficial effect, as it cleared new land for agricultural exploitation.”

Another version of the disaster is contained in the hypothesis of an invasion of a more warlike people from Mexico, which caused the fall of the Mayans. Professors Jeremy Sabloff and Gordon Willey of Harvard University have suggested that invaders, better armed and organized, came from the Gulf Coast and swept through the Mayan lands like locusts. The cities of Ceibal and Altar de Sacrifisio reveal dramatic changes in the forms of household ceramics, architecture and sculpture; this allowed researchers to claim that the cities were captured by strangers who established their own customs and orders there. The foreign presence in Ceibal is clearly indicated by the appearance of the gods of the Mexican pantheon and the image of an apparent foreigner with a pageboy haircut and a trimmed mustache, with the inscription "Ah Bolon Tun" on a sculpture dating from 849.

However, most archaeologists agree that the prime candidates for the role of invaders are the Putun Mayans, a race of warriors and traders who experienced strong Mexican influence and controlled coastal trade routes. What benefit did the greatest traders of ancient Central America want to gain from the destruction of their main clients? Perhaps the invaders were a symptom rather than the cause of the problem; the Putun Maya simply retreated inland to protect their trade routes as the Mayan civilization of the southern plains collapsed around them.

According to some researchers, the cause of the fall of the Mayan civilization was a conflict of a more peaceful nature. They argue that lowlanders depended on trade relations with Mexico to support ambitious building programs carried out by city rulers. Everything was fine while trade routes passed through Tikal, but in the 9th century. n. e. a shorter sea route around the Yucatan Peninsula was opened. Having lost their main source of wealth, the Mayan rulers became impoverished, and their cities soon fell into decay.