Decline Of The Mayan Civilization Essay

The center of the Ancient Mayan Empire was in the geographical area of what is now Guatemala. The Maya reached their peak of power around the 6th century A.D. and were known for their amazing architecture, their Mayan calendar system, and intricate symbolic form of writing called Hieroglyphics. The Maya were the creators of gigantic fascinating stone cities that still stand today in Central America. These cities were abandoned by the Mayan civilization around 900 A.D., and scholars have debated the reasoning behind the decline of this fascinating and powerful empire ever since. The Mayan civilization was one of the most dominant indigenous societies Mesoamerica has ever been home to; how did a society so grand and powerful decline and disappear
But here in lies the issue, there simply was no proof of the decline of the Maya. One day the most powerful civilization of the Ancient world was no longer there, it disappeared. People think after researching for many, many years that there were plenty of things within the empire that changed, but they can’t seem to come up with a reason great enough to make an entire civilization vanish. It is said that overpopulation was becoming an issue, frequent skirmishes with nearby warring clans supposedly forced some Maya out of their cities, and possibly the largest reason, the game animals in the area severely diminished and food was hard to come by. I suppose without food it would be difficult to keep a civilization
Unfortunately, I am no closer to finding an answer than I was when I asked the same question in the first paragraph. I have done a lot of research, and I just can’t seem to find an answer to this unsolved mystery. The Maya were a people that seemed to have their act together. They were inventive and ingenious in many ways. Inventions like observatories were created by the Maya and are still used to this day, possibly slightly updated, but nonetheless created by the powerhouse of the Ancient world. These people were wise far beyond their years and it is completely and utterly fascinating. They came up with forms of natural medicines, they enhanced their children 's features when they were born to create assets that they believed their kids would need to survive in this world. They were also one of the first peoples to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs. In the daytime, the drugs were used as painkillers in healing, and in the evening, they were used in their religious rituals. For all of these reasons, the Maya were considered an intelligent culture, which would lead us to believe that there had to be some insanely strange happening of events for such a culture to