Sustainable Societies (The actual report)

By Jess B

What is a sustainable society?

I believe that a sustainable society is a society that either existed for centuries with continuous success (economic prosperity, social stability, cultural complexity, etc.) and showing evidence of sustainability for 800 years before their collapse, or sustainability for 300 years up until the present. It is hard to develop a concrete definition for a sustainable society as I have come to the conclusion there is no one society (past or present) that is completely sustainable.

What makes a society sustainable?

There are many factors that contribute to the level of sustainability within a society. These factors range from the societies system of government and its decisions to how the society disposes of its waste and manages it water consumption.

I think that there are four main categories that these factors fall under though, government, economic factors (includes trade), environmental factors and warfare. (neutrality, allies, enemies, etc.)

The four main factors:

This is only the framework at its most basic level; these main factors can be split into tens, possibly hundreds of other factors, all on different levels of complexity.

One thing that may seem to be missing from my framework are the cultural factors (their values, religion, etc.) When I first formed my framework I had a separate category for “Cultural factors”, later on I found that these factors usually influenced the factors from other categories, they were not a driving force of sustainability in themselves. Yet, I have decided that a flexible culture is needed for a society to be sustainable and I will discuss this in depth later.

Government:

Not only are the people who are governing (ruling) a country the ones who make the decisions, they are also the ones who are to be blamed when everything goes wrong. There are many different systems of government as well, and all of them are effective is used in the right situation. Examples:

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was governed by a system of monarchy. At the very, very top where their gods, underneath them was the pharaoh, one man with a funny beard, lots of gold and a face covered in make-up. The pharaoh is basically the Egyptians version of a king, though the people believed that he was more than a man, they believed that he was a god. This gave the pharaoh absolute control over the affairs of his country. This means that they weren’t really a monarchy, they were actually a theocracy. (A form of government in which God or a deity is recognized as the supreme ruler) Beneath the pharaoh were his advisors and ministers, these people were mostly priests and were there to do the pharaohs biding.

The Egyptian society was actually immensely successful and, in my opinion, had a very sustainable system of government. (It is said that the Egyptians may have the longest continuous history of any people, spanning some 7,000 years-but this includes pre-history and their collapse)

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece was government has changed to suit the needs of its society (it was flexible); at first each city-state was ruled by wealthy men, this was a form of tyranny. Over the years the government changed until it came to the system that we mostly associate with Ancient Greece, democracy. (Democracy literally means ‘government of the people.’

In the Ancient Greek version of democracy only men of Athenian decent were allowed to vote. (No women, children or slaves were allowed to vote) They assembly was held in the Pynx (which was a hill on the west of the Acropolis); this meeting place could hold around 6000 people. Assembly members met about once a week and at each meeting of the assembly certain topics were discussed and voted on. The assembly would also gather in cases of emergency and in cases of trials of law in which the assembly became a jury.

The advantage of having such a government system as this was that everyone was represented and could have their say. (Well every Athenian male at least) This would stop the people from revolting against their government (like the pharaoh but by using a different method)

Britain and the United Kingdom

The Untied Kingdom is governed by a variation of monarchy called a constitutional monarchy. At the head of the government is the queen, the current monarch is Queen Elizabeth the second. This form of government involves a hereditary title of sovereign (the exclusive right to have complete control over an area of governance, people, or oneself) Beneath the queen (and king) is a long list of advisors and cabinets including the Privy Council and Cabinet, the Prime Minister, chancellor and the home secretary.

In this form of government the people do not really have a chance to express their views and there is a higher risk of revolt (and there is history of this occurring)

Out of these three forms of government I believe that democracy is the most effective and agreeable form of government. Although my views are rather biased as this is the present day and we value freedom of speech above many other things.

Environmental:

At its most basic level, this point in the framework looks simple, but it isn’t. There are so many different factors that belong under the ‘Environmental’ heading that it just isn’t funny, here are just a few of them:

~Soil-erosion
~agriculture
~Forests-management, deforestation and measures to prevent it
~Animals/fauna/Biodiversity
~Over hunting and measures to prevent that
~Control of introduced species
~Water usage/conservation-preservation of the societies water sources
~Waste management-how the society dispose/d of/stored its waste materials
~Climate change- the societies response to climate change and how they plan to combat it
~Recycling
~Preservation of non-renewable resources
~Adaptation to environment-if a society adapts to their environment and uses it to their advantage, they are more likely to be successful
~Renewable energy vs. non renewable


Edo Japan

Though the Edo period only accounted for a short part of Japan’s history, it was a very influential period. (Or at least influential on today’s societies) During this time, Edo Japan had the largest population in the world, some 1.25 million people. In this time, the people realized that they only had a very limited supply of resources because they were purposely closed off from the rest of the world (and so had no trade system) and if they didn’t try to conserve it, it would not be sustainable. To fix this problem many specialized collectors and tradesmen evolved and they became a society of “ultimate recyclers.” Among many other things, they used human waste and ash as fertilizer, collected used candle wax to create new candles and collected used umbrella ribs to recycle into new umbrellas.

Today Japan depends on imports from other countries for 78 percent of its energy, 60 percent of its food (caloric value), and 82 percent of its timber consumption. Japan in the Edo Period could serve as one model of a sustainable society. The basis of its sustained economy and cultural development was not mass production and mass consumption for convenience, as we see in modern society, but rather the full utilization of limited resources.

Australian Aboriginals

Though some may argue that they did not practice very sustainable agricultural methods, I beg to differ. Australia’s climate, poor rainfall and poor soil make it one of the harshest places to live in the world. We have modern technology to enable us to survive here but the aboriginals had nothing when they first arrived. For anyone to survive in such a place for any length of time is amazing, but the aborigines have been in Australia for somewhere around 60, 000 years.

The aboriginals were nomadic people, the traveled in tribes across the land to find food and water sources and shelter. They passed the knowledge of bush food and bush medicines down through the generations through their dreamtime stories. They burnt grasses to find animals for food but they were also creating the conditions that some Australian plants need to germinate. They avoided over hunting by leaving animals and plants to reproduce and so ensured that they had an ongoing food supply. It was incredible that they survived for as long as they did and if it had been us in there place I don’t think we would be able to get that far.

Warfare:

There are actually a few ways for societies to be sustainable in this area. One way is to have a huge, well supplied and organized army and to completely destroy your enemies and defend your borders like it’s the end of the world. Another way is to be a neutral country, meaning that you do not participate in wars (don’t take sides, don’t have enemies or allies, etc.) in the hope that people will just leave your country alone. The last way is to have a lot of allies and have them help you when you get in trouble (but it has to be able to work the other way as well)

Ancient Rome

Ancient Roman society spanned from 800 BC-AD 476. (Although there were many changes to their civilization within this time frame) They were the ‘we have a huge, well supplied and organized army to completely destroy your enemies and defend your borders like it’s the end of the world’ type guys.

Their military systems was incredibly complex and they actually invented many things for the purpose of war (bridges, fortified camps, siege machines, roads, systems for mining, walling and civil engineering by military troops (such as putting in aqueducts, draining land, cultivating vineyards, the digging of shipping canals, harbors and the construction of town walls) they even used a census system to organize the people into different classes and to decide on who to recruit and where to put them. The Roman’s were involved in so many wars that it just wasn’t funny. Their civilization was built closely around war and they had a lot of enemies.

A modern society that would fall into the same group as the Roman’s would probably be America. They have a very well organized and supplied military and they have also invented many things for the purpose of war. A large difference though is that America has many allies.

Switzerland

Switzerland is the place that you want to be if you’re the opposite of the Roman’s. They are a self-imposed neutral society and have been since its neutrality was officially established in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna. It is the second oldest neutral society. (the oldest being Sweden)

The major flaw that comes with being a neutral society is that there is nothing actually stopping somebody from attacking you. Who cares if you signed some treaty? Who cares if you say that you’re a neutral country? There is an example of this exact thing happening to Switzerland in the Second World War when German bombs were dropped within its borders even though they were a neutral country.

Some other examples of a neutral society would be Ireland (neutral country since its independence in 1922), Sweden (the oldest neutral country-since a short war with Norway in the Napoleonic wars in 1914), Moldova (since 1994) and the Netherlands. (now a member of NATO)

United Nations

This is one of the largest groups of allies to ever exist. Unlike past agreements between countries to be ‘allies’ of sorts, the UN is an official group which involves the government of every country and it would be pretty hard to stab a country in the back through the UN.

Economic factors:

For a society to be sustainable at the most basic level they need to have food, shelter and water. A lot of societies did not have access to some resource that they needed. (Such as certain types of food like wheat and rice and certain metals like gold and copper) To be able to trade countries had to find one thing that the other country would be willing to trade for. This would usually result in the creation of an economy. (If the country didn’t already have one) Another reason why a society needs an economy is that the workers need something to be working for otherwise they won’t feel very motivated to work.

Ancient Greece

At its economic height, in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, ancient Greece was the most advanced economy in the world. The Mediterranean Sea was by far the most important resource for the Greeks. Without it the Greeks would not have been able to trade with the other surrounding countries. They traded grapes, wine, olives, olive oil, and works of art for things like cotton, fruit, livestock, rice, pottery, and wheat.
An example of the Greeks economic standing is the average daily wage of the Greek worker. Their average wage in, terms of wheat, was about 12 kg. This was more than 3 times the average daily wage of an Egyptian worker during the Roman period, about 3.75 kg.

Modern Day Australia

Although our economy wasn’t always as well off as it is now it is showing huge ‘improvements.’ Australia’s economy is booming thanks to our success in the mining sector, low employment rates and overseas interest in our resources. Some people say that it’s Christmas come early, others disagree. The one thing that I’m pretty sure of is that our economy may seem like its booming but on the inside it isn’t very stable-at all.

The effect of culture upon sustainability

The flexibility of a society’s culture could have a very dramatic effect on the sustainability of their society. An example of an inflexible culture would the Easter Islanders and the deforestation of their island for the sake of their gods. Another one would be the Mayans who sacrificed their forests to build huge pyramid-like structures to honor their gods.

An example of a flexible culture would be the Byzantine Empire. They were once part of the Roman Empire but when the Empire started to crumble they split off and became the Byzantines. They slowly adapted to Greek culture (hellinization) and were able to survive a lot longer than the rest of the Roman Empire.

Conclusion

It is almost certainly impossible for a society to be utterly and totally sustainable because if they turned their back on even one little part of the framework it would come crashing down around their ears. Creating a sustainable society may seem like an easy thing to do when you look at a framework at its most basic level, but as soon as you get into the finer points of it, it gets a lot more complicated.

Though it isn’t all doom and gloom, of course many things have changed today, but perhaps there are some hints to help us create a sustainable future if instead we look to the past.

References:

Books:

Butler, 2001, Nations of the World: Sweden, Raintree Steck-Vaughn Publishers, United States
-----, 1999, Facts about Finland, Otava Book Printing Co, Keuruu
-----, 2004, The Book of Rule: How the World is Governed, Dorling Kindersely, China

Websites (prepare for the huge list)….or just look at my delicious:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece#Society
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece#Society
http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/education/projects/webunits/greecerome/Greecegovt1.html http://library.thinkquest.org/3011/egypt3.htm
http://dictionary.reference.com/
http://www.ancient-egypt-online.com/ancient-egypt-government.html
http://www.riverschool.org/students/work/culture.e.gov.htm
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Monarchy
http://bhc.britaus.net/About_the_UK/aboutukdefault.asp?id=71

http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page5.asp

http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page1.asphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_monarchy
http://www.japanfs.org/en/newsletter/200303-1.html
http://billtotten.blogspot.com/2005/10/japans-sustainable-society-in-edo_04.html
http://www.energybulletin.net/5140.htmlhttp://www.backyardnature.com/cgi-bin/gt/tpl.h,content=438 http://www.japanfs.org/en/column/images/edo_pdf/edo_chapter10.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_archaeology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_ancient_Rome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_ancient_Rome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_wars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_military_engineering
http://www.roman-empire.net/army/army.html
http://www.crystalinks.com/romemilitary.htmlhttp://library.thinkquest.org/16325/r-mil.html

http://www.numbera.com/rome/http://library.thinkquest.org/26602/war.htmhttp://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/ancient_rome.htm

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/romeancientrome/Ancient_Rome_Republic_Empire_Fall_of_Rome.htm
http://history-switzerland.geschichte-schweiz.ch/switzerland-neutrality-world-war-ii.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_country
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Neutral_countries.svg

http://www.swissworld.org/en/politics/foreign_policy/neutrality_and_isolationism/
http://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home/topics/peasec/sec/ref_neutr.html
http://www.energybulletin.net/5140.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability
http://www.humboldt.edu/~envecon/ppt/309/food/tsld004.htm
http://www.answers.com/topic/sustainability?cat=technology

The Collapse of Classic Maya

The Collapse of Mayan Society
By Jess B

No, it isn't just your imagination, the formatting is stuffed.

“…..The city was desolate. No remnant of this race hangs round the ruins, with
traditions handed-down from father to son and from generation to generation. It
lay before us like a shattered in the midst of the ocean, her mast gone, her name
effaced, her crew perished, and none to tell whence she came, to whom she
belonged, how long on her journey, or what caused her destruction ....”

~John Lloyd Stephens, 1842

The Mayans were an incredibly complex society and were one of the most advanced civilizations in Mesoamerica. They created new ways of suriving in a seasonal desert, invented a complicated variety of intensive agricultural techniques such as canals, terracing, raised fields, the use of human faeces as fertilizer, seasonal swamps or bajos, using muck from the bajos to create fertile fields, dikes, dams, irrigation, water reservoirs, several types of water storage systems, hydraulic systems and swamp reclamation. Their beliefs system was as complex as any modern day religion's, with huge temples dedicated to their gods and ritual sacrifices.They even had their own written dialect and passed down their knowledge through the generations.

And yet, the cause of the collapse of the Classic Maya civilization remains a mystery even today. There have been some eighty-eight different theories or variations of theories attempting to explain the sudden collapse of one of the most complex civilizations in our history. At first I tried to find other models for societal collapse that I could use to structure this but as I delved further and further into the depths of the Google search list I found less and less. I have, therefore, decided to use Jared Diamond's five point framework with a few add-ons of my own.

Climate Change

The Maya are often conceived as having lived in a rainforest, but technically, they lived in a seasonal desert without access to stable sources of drinking water.

The Mayans were particularly prone to climate change. As they did not have permanent water sources 95 percent of their population depended on frequent rainfall for both agricultural use and human consumption. After examining sediments from lake beds and the sea floor scientists and archaeologists have found evidence of a dry period that began about 1,200 years ago that was punctuated by periods of three to nine years which had little or no rainfall. These dry periods were actually long droughts that correspond to periodic downturns in the Maya culture. These shifts may actually have been the result of climate change. Each event placed more strain on the society which led to a collapse of a portion of the civilization each time. The remaining population could not survive the last severe drought which occurred around 910 AD.

Other societies have succumbed to climate swings. In Mesopotamia, a canal-supported agricultural society collapsed after a severe 200 year drought about 3,400 years ago. With wetter conditions, civilizations thrived in the Mediterranean, Egypt, and West Asia. Ten years after their economic peak in 2,300 B.C, however, catastrophic droughts and cooling disrupted agricultural production and caused regional collapse.

About 300 years after the collapse of the Maya the Chumash people on California’s Channel Islands survived severe droughts by changing from hunter-gatherers to traders. This is an example of how the response of a society can determine whether they survive or collapse.

Environmental Damage

Evidence has been found that environmental damage did actually contribute to the collapse of the Classic Mayan civilization. One example of this environmental damage can be found in pollen samples that were collected from columns of soil that were excavated from lake beds across the region. At one point, 1,200 years ago (maybe this was linked to the beginning of the droughts?) weed pollen almost completely replaced tree pollen. This suggests that the Mayans excessive tree-lopping caused a severe case of deforestation which would have lead to heightened erosion and evaporation; the evidence of erosion is recorded in thick layers of sediment that was washed into lakes. Something else that supports the deforestation theory is the thickness of the floor stones in the Mayan ruins. For the Mayans to build a fire large enough and hot enough to make a one metre square floor stone they would have needed to chop down about twenty trees. In the earliest ruins, the stones were a foot or more thick, but they got progressively thinner. The latest ruins had stones that were only a few inches thick.

Studies of settlement remains also show that this deforestation coincided with a dramatic drop in the Mayan population. The sunlight that would usually evaporate water from the rainforest canopy would heat the ground instead. Lake sediment cores also indicate that the Mayan deforestation appears to have coincided with a series of droughts that were already occurring.

Loss of Allies

I do not believe that the loss of allies was a contributing factor to the collapse of the Maya. Although there were often disputes between cities and some internecine warfare the Mayans were never involved in any large scale wars. The disputes were usually between the royal or elite classes and rarely involved the larger lower classes.

The other reason that I do not believe that this was a contributing factor to the collapse is that it wasn’t just one or two cities that collapsed; most of the southern and central lowland cities were abandoned while the northern cities like Chichen Itza, Uxmal, and Coba continued to thrive. Loss of allies does not explain the patterned abandonment.

Hostile Enemies

Some Mayanists (eg. Demarest) point to large-scale conflict as the cause of the collapse, but it still does not explain the abandonment of other cities that were not involved in these wars. The Greek city-states fought each other for years but they did not abandon their city-states as a result of these conflicts. Even when war exterminates a population the land is not abandoned. The victors usually go on to claim the land and take the space. A few examples of this are the Thirty Years’ War, the Eastern Front in the Second World War and the Napoleonic Wars-none of these resulted in the permanent abandonment of the cities that were defeated.

On the other end of the scale is internecine warfare. Internecine warfare can be a mark of a declining civilization or power. According to Paul Colinvaux’s The Fates of Nations-A Biological Theory, humans will fight to preserve their share of existing resources, unless they can obtain more resources. Apparently the Mayans did the exact opposite of what they were meant to do. They abandoned their cities and slowly died out. I believe that the Mayan collapse just does not fit into the model that has been set by the collapses of other cities due to warfare or hostile enemies.

Loss of Trading Partners

Although there is evidence that the Mayans lost their trading partners I do not believe that it was a crucial factor in the collapse of the Mayan civilization. Most of the Mayans trade involved the importation of luxury items such as obsidian, feathers, cacao, and other luxury items. Staple foods were produced where the people lived and they did not have the methods for storing any imported food in their humid environment. The collapse of the Mayans trade is most likely an effect, rather than a cause of the Classic Maya collapse.

Disease

This is one of the categories that I have added on to Jared Diamond’s five point framework. When the droughts hit the Mayans their crops failed and their water sources dried up. This would have increased the risk of epidemic disease in the civilization as disease comes hand in hand with famine and malnutrition. One theory that was remarkably different states that disease can actually be helpful in some situations. By reducing population, disease lessens the pressure on an over populated society, eliminated the need to farm marginal land or destroy the environment, and increases the ratio of supply to demand. For example, the Bubonic Plague actually increased the value of labour and helped to bring an end to serfdom.

In conclusion, disease probably hastened the collapse of the Classic Maya, but the driving force was probably the drought and environmental damage, which led to a lack of water, which led to famine, which led to disease and malnutrition.

Cultural Factors

The other category that I have decided to add to Jared Diamond’s five point framework is cultural factors. In the case of the Mayans, they had an incredibly complex religion with its own sets of beliefs, rituals and values. A ruler’s divine status was at the core of the Maya’s view of the universe. His power to influence the gods through bloodletting rituals made him a critical component in the order of things. When the droughts hit and the crops started to fail the people would have turned to their rulers. When the gods did not respond to the ruler’s bloodletting and ritual sacrifices the people would have started to revolt. The ruling class would have been thrown into disarray and the result would have been chaos. The belief system shattered. And finally it might have reached the point where people just abandoned their cities and left to build their own lives.

Although this theory may seem a bit farfetched it becomes more believable when you add all of the factors together. If there was a drought, disease, a revolt against the ruling class from the lower class and environmental destruction all at once the collapse seems to make a lot more sense.

Response to Collapse

There is little evidence of to show what the Mayans response to their collapse was and this is probably where they failed. Their cities were abandoned and their temples were left to rot, if there was any attempt to avert the collapse it did not work. It is the response of the civilization that determines whether they survive or collapse.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I believe that the collapse of Classic Maya was caused by one or two factors and, as it progressed, created a new range of problems that contributed to the total collapse of the civilization. The two factors that I believe caused the collapse were both environmental-Climate change and environmental damage. One factor was a direct result of the Mayans intensive agricultural methods and their failure to respond when their environment started to fall into decline. When their crop started to fail, supply began to outweigh demand due to their overpopulated cities, disease and malnutrition started to spread and their water sources dried up the people blamed their rulers for the god’s benevolence. When the ruling class failed to fix the problem the lower class may have revolted against them and caused a full scale collapse where their belief system and complex societies just imploded. This theory would also explain how there are still living descendants of the Classic Mayans.


Comparison to Modern Society

Experts say that the collapse of the Maya could serve as a valuable lesson today to societies in Africa and elsewhere that are vulnerable to droughts. When droughts strike, they can trigger a chain reaction that begins with crop failures and scarce water supplies, leading to malnutrition, increased disease and competition for resources, and ultimately causing warfare between nations and socio-political upheaval.

Australia is in the middle of one of the worst droughts in history. Our population is expanding rapidly; our demand is starting to outweigh our supply. Wheat crops are failing, fruit farmers are cutting down their trees and selling up, pig farmers can no longer cope with the cost of feed, demand and cheaper overseas imports. Because our dams are so low we are sucking more and more water out of the land and still we do not implement measures to preserve what little water we have left. Because of the lowering of the water tables the level of salinity in our soils is rising and the area that we are clearing for housing is widening. Due to the amount of deforestation that we have caused erosion is taking hold of our coastlines and land is becoming more and more like an expanse of red and brown dirt. To support our population the demand that we are putting on the environment and our natural resources is increasing every day. Does any of this sound familiar?

In the Eastern states the Murray-Darling basin (one of the biggest water sources for agriculture in the country) is drying out. Go up to Queensland and the Gold coast and we have torrential rain and flooding. If this isn’t an example of climate change and what we are doing to our world then I don’t know what is.

I believe that our civilization isn’t at as much of a risk of collapsing as the Mayans were as we have well established trade partners and allies and we are able to implement modern technology to try to solve our problems. Although, if our trade partners were to find themselves facing a similar situation to the one that we are and cannot supply us with the extra food and water our civilization needs, we would be compromised.


What can contemporary society learn from the collapse of this past society?

Every society in our past generally collapsed for different reasons. Yet every society that collapsed in the past is sending us the same message. To avert a collapse a society needs to respond. Not as splintered groups, but as a united front. The lessons of the past are there, plain and simple. It is our choice whether or not we listen to them.

Bibliography
Books:
Kirkpatrick, 2003, Understanding People in the Past, The Maya, Heinemann Library, United States
Laughton, 1998, The Maya, Life, Myth and Art, Duncan Baird, Great Britain
Chrisp, 1994, Look into the Past, The Maya, Wayland, England
Diamond, 2005, Collapse, the Penguin Group, London, England

Websites:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/03/0313_030313_mayadrought.html
http://science.nasa.gov.au/headlines/y2004/15nov_maya.htm
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/299/5613/1731
http://www.jaguar-sun.com/ideas.html
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=9779&tid=282&cid=921&ct=162
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Maya_collapse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_civilization
http://earth.google.com/
http://www.google.com/
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:eYnb8OBymFMJ:www.uri.edu/artsci/ecn/starkey/ECN398%2520-Ecology,%2520Economy,%2520Society/The%2520Maya.pdf+Mayan+Collapse+her+mast+broken&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=au (for the quote in the beginning)

http://www.authenticmaya.com/maya_culture_collapse.htm
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/44510?fulltext=true&print=yes

http://www.learner.org/interactives/collapse/
http://www.learner.org/interactives/collapse/mayans.html

http://www.learner.org/interactives/collapse/mayans_sub.html
http://www.projectshum.org/Ancient/mayan.html
http://home.planet.nl/~roeli049/enghome1.htm
http://belize-guide.info/past.and.present/history/

http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/travel/dconrad/dcmayatrade.html

Picture References:

http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Ancient-Mayan-Ruins-Chichen-Itza-Mexico-Posters_i1003636_.htm
http://www.insurancebroadcasting.com/062107-p5.jpg

http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d10/asb/anthro2003/legacy/maya/mmc04eng.html

http://www.crystalinks.com/xbalanque.jpg