I watched Mel Gibson’s movie “Apocalypto”. In one scene where the prisoners were being led into the city it showed the fields nearest the city to be low yield with stunted growth. It showed the overflow from the dye making pits in the city flowing into ditches and flowing away.
The whole scene showed an arrogant and declining society.
Also watched a documentary that posited that the Mayans burnt too many trees for the ash to make the whitewash for their buildings. The estimation of how many acres of trees had to be cut to whitewash one small temple was astonishing.
The Chimu had built a nice place, then there was a bit of a drought and they went wild with human sacrifice (the higher-ups were trying to cling to power, and, hey, why does this sound familiar?). That didn't work. It's not impossible that the Mayans used human bone ash in their mixture as well, and when there were fewer trees...
Cradle of Chocolate?[snip] Digging through history to a time before agriculture, archaeologists from Cornell University and the University of California at Berkeley have found evidence of a village that was continuously occupied from 2000 B.C. to A.D. 1000 as well as hints to the secret of the community's remarkable longevity.
by Roger Segelken
October 8, 1998
"My guess is, it all comes down to chocolate," says John S. Henderson, professor of anthropology at Cornell and co-director, together with Rosemary Joyce of Berkeley, of the archaeological dig at Puerto Escondido, Honduras. The type of ceremonial pottery uncovered by the archaeologists points to that region of Mesoamerica as a possible "Cradle of Chocolate." [/snip]