Department of Geography, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Mar 6;109(10):3652-7. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1114838109. Epub 2012 Feb 27.
Episodes of population loss and cultural change, including the famous Classic Collapse, punctuated the long course of Maya civilization. In many cases, these downturns in the fortunes of individual sites and entire regions included significant environmental components such as droughts or anthropogenic environmental degradation. Some afflicted areas remained depopulated for long periods, whereas others recovered more quickly. We examine the dynamics of growth and decline in several areas in the Maya Lowlands in terms of both environmental and cultural resilience and with a focus on downturns that occurred in the Terminal Preclassic (second century Common Era) and Terminal Classic (9th and 10th centuries CE) periods. This examination of available data indicates that the elevated interior areas of the Yucatán Peninsula were more susceptible to system collapse and less suitable for resilient recovery than adjacent lower-lying areas.
人口减少和文化变迁的事件，包括著名的古典崩溃，在玛雅文明的漫长历程中时有发生。在许多情况下，这些个别地点和整个地区的命运下滑都包含了显著的环境因素，如干旱或人为的环境退化。一些受灾地区长期人口减少，而另一些地区则更快地恢复。我们根据环境和文化的弹性，研究了玛雅低地的几个地区的增长和衰退的动态，重点关注了在终端前古典期（公元 2 世纪）和终端古典期（公元 9 世纪至 10 世纪）发生的衰退。对现有数据的分析表明，尤卡坦半岛内部的高地地区比相邻的低地地区更容易受到系统崩溃的影响，也不太适合弹性恢复。
