Farming's Impact on the Rise and Fall of the Mayan Empire History is an ever-changing concept. The world as we know it has not always been the way we know it to be, and with each new discovery a different connection/story line is revealed. One of the greatest mysteries of ancient history is the fall of the Mayan Civilization. The Mayan's are thought to be one of the most technologically advanced and successful civilizations of our world's early and most primitive times, but as quick as they conquered they vanished. There are many different theories as to what caused the Mayan's to fall and disappear however, the theory that seems to have the most support is that the one thing that allowed them to be most successful also doomed them in their final days... farming. The Mayan Civilization grew so rapidly due to their advanced agricultural techniques, their ability to develop and perfect these techniques based on their need to produce more food for their growing needs, however ultimately these farming methods failed them leaving their enormous civilization dependant on food THEY farmed hungry and forced to move on or die out. To start, the Mayan's weren't a very large nation nor did they have very usable land to be able to farm on. They were located in Mesoamerica in the center of many wetlands and hills/mountains, however they did not let these hindrances stop them, instead, they used their unique habitat, and developed new ways of farming that proved to be VERY successful. Archeological discoveries prove so, "Evidence comes in form of vegetation disturbance including; charcoal from burning for forest cleaning and the pollen/phytoliths of domesticated plants in lowlands AND highlands prior to 3,000 B.C." (SOURCE 3) This proves that there is evidence still being discovered today of past farming endeavors of the Mayan's from thousands of years ago. Of all the crops harvested, corn, beans, and squash proved the most useful and successful however they also grew: squash, pumpkin, gourds, avocados, papayas, sapodillas, sweet potatoes, and chili peppers. In the beginning not all crops harvested were used for trade, "Early farmers only grew enough food for their family, but also grew cotton and cacao trees for trade with surrounding civilizations" (SOURCE 5) As the Mayan's began to grow they worked strongly as a city as a whole to develop and execute many new ideas, "Turns our they cultivated their fields as a community, planting seeds inholes made with a pointed wooden stick throughout raised fields." (SOURCE 2) This was one of the earliest techniques tested by the Mayans, and thought of by many as the starting point for more ideas to follow.
Once the community began working together to reach their common goal there was essentially no stopping the Mayan's. Another successful techniques was the "Slash and Burn" method which was used in the heavily forested areas of land, "Mayans would use stone axes, blades, and obsidian/flint to cut down trees and bushes before burning them to make a clearing" (SOURCE 4) The ashes that were left behind after the slash and burn was very helpful once mixed in with the soil because it was the earliest form of fertilizer used. The Mayan's also had multiple scientific discoveries that played roles in farming; such as, the ever-famous "Mayan Calendar". Many of the best ancient Mayan farmers were considered to be early Mayan lords because of their seemingly godly knowledge of changing seasons and weather. However, the credit should have just gone to the calendars they created by studying the fields of corn and the positioning of the sun in both spring and fall equinoxes, "they marked out a complex calendar, according to the natural world around them, in order to grow successful crops" (SOURCE 6) This allowed the farmers to understand which time of year to plant each individual crop so that it would harvest as healthy and large as possible. Terrace farming was also developed by the Mayan's. This technique involved cutting literal terraces into hillsides in the highlands of Mesoamerica, "terraces conform better into hillsides contours as degree of slope steepens" (SOURCE3) So in theory, the steeper the hill, the more successful the method. Terrace farming had multiple variations including; rock-embankment, "rock-embankment are non-contoured terraces with a sloping field laid across each curve and hill" (SOURCE 1) A downfall to this method was that it did not include facilities for artificial water, there for was dependant on precipitation to water the soil. The Mayan's developed a fix for this problem as well, "the slopes are broken by embankments which collect eroding soils, creating small level (or near-level) sections of land which extend 1-5 meters behind the wall" (SOURCE4) Each terrace area is sloping with thinner soils immediately in front of terrace walls and thicker soils behind allowing walls to be held up, while soil that is actually planted can easily soak up water. To avoid erosion and capture/create irrigation system, "weir terraces are laid across drainage channels and capture still-laden run-off" (SOURCE7) Along with the Weir terraces, to counteract erosive force of rainfall and maintain fertile hillside soils Mayan's built rock/rubble embankments, also known as, soil-trap terraces. The terraces methods proved VERY successful, "served as a superior cultivation medium for a dominant crop, perhaps maize, which was probably also planted throughout entire terraced section, provided adequate soil depth for cultivation of root crops, maize having been planted on thinner upslope soils, and allowed water to be carried upslope and deposited uniformly over each terraced section" (SOURCE8) In conclusion, terraces, used for highland farming, supplied four distinct advantages; they kept traffic away from cultivated fields where crop damage might have occurred, eased walking conditions (walkways and small stone walls acted as devices to control the distribution of run-off water) and facilitated movement over muddy terrain during the long wet season. Raised field farming (picture below) was another method developed by the Mayan's to accommodate the often swampy lowlands of their fields. To build a raised field farmland, "farmers in swamps dug up the mud and shaped it into raised fields that rose 2-4 feet above water canals that surrounded them" (SOURCE 10) There were multiple positives to raised field farming such as; fish swam in these canals and their droppings acted as a fertilizer to the water that was soaked up by the plants, the plants that grew in the canals (most often water lilys) kept the canals from drying up, and the crops did not depends on rain because the swampy ground acted as a constant source of water. The raised field farming was very productive and successful, but was very hard for farmers to build and maintain. The next method, the Quasi Rainforest, was an array of tree crops, vine crops, root crops, and standard seed crops combined in such a way as to preserve the primal energy and nutrient cycles of the parent rainforest. Quasi Rainforest is thought today to be the, "most ecologically efficient hypothesized bio-intensive agricultural system is essentially a proxy for quasi rainforest in Mayan lowlands" (SOURCE 9) The final, and most scientifically correct is the swidden technique, which is similar to the slash and burn method previously stated. However, the swidden technique allows a more natural form of rehydrating the land, "swidden is an extensive system of cultivation that maintains 2-4 more years of fallow for every year of cultivation." (SOURE 2) This process requires more commitment and waiting for results, but consistently produces larger and overall more successful harvests. After hearing all of the different techniques and methods of farming the Mayan's created in order to get full-use out of their challenging landscape you can clearly imagine that they were motivated enough to grow into the super-power early civilization they quickly became. As the Mayan Empire grew and expanded, their already advanced and difficult techniques had to grow as well. The Mayan's attempted to harvest a larger amount of crops in a shorter period with numerous different farming methods. The first, "extended temporal expansion is cultivation of the same area for longer. This involves fitting in an extra crop or using fields an extra year" (SOURCE 5) To execute extended temporal expansion, Mayan's began incorporating specific methods including inter-cropping and multi-cropping. Intercropping is the cultivation of more than one crop in a single field while multi-cropping is implementing more than one cropping phase per annum on the same field another crop was just harvested from. These methods proved successful and are still often used today, however, it requires a lot more nutrients being sucked from the fields with much less recovery time from season to season. The quicker turn-around from harvest to harvest also had it's advantages, "if population pressure caused fallow periods to be shortened to less years of idling, the non-useful plant would be cut before reaching maturity and young useful plants spared" (SOURCE 7) In laments terms, by not letting the fields grow over in weeds during fallow years, but instead cutting them down in preparation for their next crop, the spared species would assume dominance in the fields and useless plants would disappear over the years. Another positive of these extended temporal expansion is it required more labor which accommodated the quickly rising population, "simultaneous expansion involves the labor of more people at the same time carrying out a task, or more quickly accomplishing one" (SOURCE 8) Doing this raises yield per unit area by removing crop competitors more efficiently while also supplying more jobs and larger (early corporate-like) farming/production as opposed to smaller individual farming. As Mayan cities grew in power they also began to focus more on building their armies for both reasons of protection, but eventually allowed them to take over neighboring cities for more farmland, labor, and supplies. At the peak of the Mayan empire they consisted of a vast number of powerful city-states spreading from Southern Mexico to Northern Honduras and ultimately ruling Mesoamerica, "these cities were home to vast populations and were ruled by a dominant elite who could command mighty armies and claimed to be descended from the stars and planets themselves" (SOURCE 3) However, like most ancient powerful city-states, the crash and burn end to their glory days were quickly approaching. The fall of the Maya is one of histories greatest mysteries. One of the mightiest civilizations in the ancient America's simply fell into ruin in a very short time. Mighty cities like Tikal were abandoned, Mayan stonemasons stopped making temples, and miles of farming fields went stagnant. The dates of the downfall, however, are not in question; deciphered glyphs at several sites indicate a thriving culture in the ninth century A.D., but records go eerily silent after the last recorded date, 904 A.D.. There are multiple different theories explaining the decline of the Mayan's; the four most prominent being: the warfare theory, the famine theory, the civil strife theory, and the environmental change theory. The first theory, the warfare theory, is supported by, "many new discoveries and newly deciphered stone carvings clearly indicate that the Maya warred frequently and viscously among themselves" (SOURCE10) Evidence supports that it is quite possible due to the fact, war brings with it economic disaster as well as collateral damage that could have caused a domino effect in Mayan cities while destroying farm land in the process. The second theory, the famine theory, is also quite reasonable. As the Mayan civilization advanced, the cities grew, and their population exploded, becoming much larger than could be fed by local production. Improved agricultural techniques such as draining wetlands for planting, terracing hills, creating quasi rainforest, and inter-cropping and multi-cropping picked up some of the slack and improved trade for more income as well. However, in the end the large population in the cities and the growing demand for men in warfare left much less available for farm hands putting a great strain on food production. The third theory of reasoning for the sudden downfall of the Mayan's ties into the famine theory as well. The Civil Strife Theory suggests that as populations in the large cities boomed, a great strain was placed on the working class to produce food, build temples, clear rainforest, mine obsidian and jade and do other labor intensive tasks. At the same time as the labor intensified, food was becoming more and more scarce. The idea of the Civil Strife Theory is that the hungry, overworked working class might overthrow the ruling elite. This in result, causing the crash and burn of the overall structure that allowed the Mayan cities to run so smoothly. The final theory, The Environmental Change Theory, circles around the thought that random climate change is the final trauma that started the whirlwind downfall. The Mayans were dependant on the most basic agriculture and a handful of crops, supplemented by hunting and fishing. This caused them to be extremely vulnerable to droughts, floods, or any change in the conditions that affected their food supply. Some researchers have identified some climatic change that occurred around that time, "the costal water levels rose towards the end of the classic periods" (SOURCE 5) If this were true, people would have had to move to larger inland cities, placing strain upon their already scarce resources while at the same time losing food from farmland and fishing that were destroyed. In conclusion, the rise and fall of the Mayan civilization will always be a very high interest point to many archeologist and ancient history scholars, and there new theories will most likely continue to be made until the end of time. In my opinion, that is part of the main draw-in of the Mayan's because we will never be able to be 100% sure of the cause simply because there isn't enough lasting evidence to support any one theory. However, despite our inability to prove on theory or another, a common theme in each different theory is farming. From advanced methods of farming their difficult climate to the rapid growth in population and need for more food to support their growing nation, farming continues to come up until the very end of the Mayan saga; three out of the four main collapse theories are centered around it. So for those who will forever be fascinated by the mysteries of the Mayan's take comfort in the fact that many brilliant scholars and evidence all support the idea that which built the Mayan's into such a powerful civilization was very much a part of its sudden and complete downfall... farming. There are still however many legacies that lived on past the end of the Mayans including; slash and burn farming, fertilizers, raised field farming, terrace farming, multi-cropping, and inter-cropping. These different techniques are used to produce large scale crops, as they were designed too originally by the Mayan's thousands of years ago. So although the Mayan's did not last until present day, their glory will live on through their innovative ideas and discoveries until the end of time.