Indian Institue of Management 2008 Entrance Exams Other Entrance Exams CAT - Question Paper

The 3rd strand consisted of increased fighting, as more people fought over fewer resources. Maya warfare, already endemic, peaked just before the collapse. That is not surprising when 1 reflects that at lowest 5 million people, perhaps many more, were crammed into an area smaller that the US state of Colorado (104,000 square miles). That warfare would have reduce further the amount of land available for agriculture, by creating no-man’s lands ranging from principalities where it was now unsafe to farm. Bringing matters to a head was the strand of climate change. The drought at the time of the Classic collapse was not the 1st droughts that the Maya had lived thorough, but it was the most severe. At the time of previous droughts, there were still uninhabited parts of the Maya landscape, and people at a site affected by drought could save themselves by moving to a different site. However, by the time of vicinity on which to start anew, and the whole population could not be accommodated in the few areas that continued to have reliable water supplies.

As our 5th strand, we have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious issues undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with every other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities. Like most leaders throughout human history, the Maya kings and nobles did not heed long-term problems, insofar as they perceived them.

Finally, while we still have a few other past societies to consider before we switch our attention to the modern world, we must already be struck by a few parallels ranging from the Maya and the past societies. As a Mangareva, the Maya environmental and population issues led to increasing warfare and civil strife. Similarly, on Easter Island and at Chaco Canyan, the Maya peak population numbers were followed swiftly by political and social collapse. Paralleling the eventual extension of agriculture from Easter Island’s coastal lowlands to its uplands, and from the Mimbres floodplain to the hills, Copan’s inhabitants also expanded from the floodplain to the more fragile hill slopes, leaving them with a larger population to feed when the agricultural boom in the hills went bust. Like Easter Island chiefs erecting ever larger statues, eventually crowned by pukao, and like Anasazi elite treating themselves to necklaces of 2,000 turquoise beads, Maya kings sought to outdo every other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster - reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEOs. The passivity of Easter chiefs and Maya kings in the face of the real big threats to their societies completes our list of disquieting parallels.

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