Environment, Demographics, and Migration

Many if not most theories about the end of the Classic Maya have stressed problems of demographic and ecological stresses at the end of the Classic period (e. g., Culbert 1973c; Turner and Harrison 1978; Harrison 1977; Culbert 1988; Sanders 1973; Adams 1973a; Santley et al. 1986; Culbert et al. 1990). Such analyses correctly point to the high population levels and densities in the Late Classic period as a major source of ecological stress on the productive, but fragile, rainforest agricultural system (e. g., Culbert and Rice 1990).

Yet we must also explain in specific terms how such rapid demographic growth occurred. The last fifty years of debate in social theory and archaeology have dismissed the Malthusian logic that nonwestern societies are unable to control their demography and simply grow uncontrollably (e. g., Cowgill 1975a, 1975b). Postprocessual critiques may be correct in arguing that the utilization of assumed universal principles of demographic pressure is a fallacy that may be created by the search for general principles or “laws” in processual approaches in archaeology (e. g., Watson et al. 1971; Hodder 1982). Yet the refutation of uncontrolled demographic growth as an inevitable force in human societies does not mean that it did not occur in particular episodes of culture-history. When arguments are made that it did occur, we should try to explain specifically why overpopulation and ecological stress were allowed to develop by leaders and populaces (as conscious actors). But this viewpoint begs the question of whether those actors were actually aware of overpopulation and its “stresses” on the system, and how archaeologists would recognize if they were. To seek such specific explanations of demographic stress in some regions we must turn to the more complex and variable economic, social, and political factors discussed for each region below.

In their discussion of the Classic end at Calakmul, Braswell et al. (Chapter 9) attribute the changes and population decline to a climatological change being experienced in various ways throughout Mesoamerica (see also Folan, Gunn, et al.

1983; Hodell et al. 1995; Gill 2000). These recent climatological theories, based on pollen cores from northern Yucatan (and more recently, Venezuela; Haug et al. 2003), are a subject of discussion and disagreement throughout this volume. While Adams et al. (Chapter 15) follow this interpretation, other chapters here (O’Mansky and Dunning, Chapter 5; Demarest, Chapter 6; Ringle et al.. Chapter 21) and recent extensive paleoecological studies contradict the interpretation of the general end of Classic Maya civilization and the Terminal Classic as a period of widespread famine, disease, or other significant change in environment, nutrition, or health primarily due to climatic change (e. g., Emery 1997, 2004; Wright 1994,1997a, 1997b, 2004; Emery, Wright, and Schwartz 2000; Wright and White 1996; see also Demarest, Chapter 6). Other chapters here (Carmean et al.. Chapter 19; Ringle et al., Chapter 21; Cobos, Chapter 22) view probable drought in some areas as possibly having affected the later tenth-to eleventh-century decline of the northern Yucatan centers. In the far northern Peten and southern Campeche and Quintana Roo, climate change may have had regional manifestations and impact that accelerated collapse and prevented recovery. Yet in other areas, the local and regional impact of climatic shifts could have depended on regional ecological regimes, microclimatic variations, and political responses (e. g., Demarest et al. 2003; Dunning and Beach, in press). The timing, nature, and zones of earliest Terminal Classic changes suggest a secondary and later role for climatic change, but the issue is clearly subject to future debate. As with other factors, climate shifts may have been one element adding to the mosaic of collapses, transitions, and transformations that ended the Classic period cultural systems.

Another partial explanation for some regional demographic stresses and localized anthropogenic ecological deterioration may be seen in the chronological pattern of changes in the late eighth and ninth centuries. Processes of political fragmentation, demographic change, or loss of political complexity appear to have moved from west to east and south to north. This geographic pattern has been observed in many previous studies (e. g., Bove 1981; Lowe 1985) as indicative of the end of Classic Maya civilization. Change also appears to be more abrupt and dramatic in western Peten, with more gradual and later Terminal Classic processes in other regions. It is possible, then, that migration from western centers may have added population to other regions, perhaps with the unintended consequences of creating or exacerbating local ecological stress (see Demarest, Chapter 6).

Emigration from declining western and southern kingdoms could have further affected the demography of central Peten, Belize, and the northern lowlands in the ninth century (Demarest, Chapter 6; Rice and Rice, Chapter 7; Demarest and Escobedo 1998). The chapters here by Adams et al., Hammond and Tourtellot, Laporte, and Ashmore et al. (15, 13, 14, and 10, respectively) all describe erratic population increases in areas of Peten and Belize at the end of the Classic period. In some cases these increases were accompanied by florescence in construction activities, but generally they were followed by a disintegration of state systems (see especially Adams et al.. Chapter 15; Hammond and Tourtellot, Chapter 13; and Ashmore et al.. Chapter 14, on northern and central Belize). A somewhat later pattern of population growth and cultural florescence, followed by stresses and decline, has long been observed for the northern lowlands and, as here, has been attributed at least in part to emigration from the south (see Carmean et al.. Chapter 19; Suhler et al.. Chapter 20; Ringle et al.. Chapter 21; Demarest, Chapter 6). In recent refugee and migration theory (Bellos 1997; Black 1998; Black and Vaughan 1993; Cohen and Denge 1998; Rogge 1987), it has been shown that radical population shifts usually lead to change, but the nature of that change depends upon a wide variety of variables.