Take this glyph for example:
It says -
"When it's yellow, let it mellow.
When it's brown, flush it down."
Posted on 07/22/2009 2:07:26 PM PDT by decimon
As published in the July issue of the “Journal of Archaeological Science,” paleoethnobotanist David Lentz of the University of Cincinnati has concluded that not only did the Maya people practice forest management, but when they abandoned their forest conservation practices it was to the detriment of the entire Maya culture.
“From our research we have learned that the Maya were deliberately conserving forest resources,” says David Lentz, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Cincinnati and executive director of the Cincinnati Center for Field Studies. “Their deliberate conservation practices can be observed in the wood they used for construction and this observation is reinforced by the pollen record.”
The UC team is the first North American team allowed to work at the Tikal site core in northern Guatemala in more than 40 years. The UC team is unique in other ways as well. Whereas previous archaeological excavations reflected an interest in culture history, particularly of the elites, researchers’ interests are different in the 21st century.
“Forty years ago the emphasis was on what king built what palace, who slew whom and who is portrayed on what stelae. It’s all about the rulers and their exploits,” says Lentz. “They didn’t look at the economy, agricultural practices, forest management or how the people and the culture functioned.”
And what the UC team has learned by studying these processes is that the Maya, at least initially, were practicing good forestry management.
“They were not allowed to cut down what we’re calling the ‘sacred groves,’” says Lentz. “Then that changed during the Late Classic period with Jasaw Chan K’awiil — one of the greatest figures of prehistory. The Tikal Maya had been beaten up and had fallen to second-rate status prior to his ascendancy. Jasaw Chan K’awiil led an army to the heartland of a competing city, Calakmul, captured their ruler, bound him, brought him back and sacrificed him — and it totally reversed their fortunes in a very dramatic way.”
After that, the Maya rebuilt the city of Tikal in a way never seen before. They begin building huge temples that required considerable resources, especially large, straight trees whose wood could withstand the weight of tons of stone. Their choices were limited to two types of trees only.
“So, unfortunately, Jasaw Chan K’awiil tapped into their sacred groves to do this,” says Lentz. The stands of virgin timber were more than 200 years old in some areas. After building a few of the temples, the Maya ran out of timber from the Manilkara zapota (sapodilla) tree, so they switched to an inferior tree —Haematoxylon campechianum, logwood or inkwood — which is found in swamps.
“Sapodilla is soft when you first cut it, so it can be carved into beautiful, intricate shapes. Yet when it dries, it is as hard as iron,” Lentz explains. “Logwood, on the other hand, is like iron to start with and stays that way.”
Logwood often is very crooked and grows to much lesser heights — so the archways in the temples built with logwood were far less ornate. Temples 1 through 4 are quite large, with temple 4 having the largest lintels, the beams over the doorways. Temples 5 and 6 (built in the middle — the temples are not numbered in order of construction) are much smaller.
“For the last temple (temple 3), they went back to sapodilla — why?” says Lentz. “Perhaps they had replanted after their sacred groves had been cleared of their timber. After 40 years you get a tree big enough with which to build. Also, at that point, things were beginning to go downhill for the Maya. Perhaps they reasoned that the gods didn’t like the new style of temple and they needed to return to the construction style of earlier, and more prosperous, times.”
So what led to the downfall of the Maya? Whether it was the gods’ displeasure or not, the answer came from the heavens.
“When you clear all the forests, it changes the hydrologic cycle,” says Lentz. “The world is like a flat surface with all the trees acting as sponges on it. The trees absorb the water. Without the trees, there is no buffer to stop the water from runoff. That causes soil erosion, which then chokes the rivers and streams. With no trees, you lose water retention in the soil or aquifers so the ground dries up and then there is less transpiration, so therefore less rainfall as well.”
In addition to using the trees as timber, the Maya also burned the trees, adding carbon to the air in the form of carbon dioxide. Trees remove carbon dioxide from the air and return oxygen in its place, thus cleaning and purifying the air.
“Forests provide many benefits to society,” says Lentz. “The Maya forests provided timber, fuel, food, fiber and medicine in addition to the ecosystem services of cleansing the air and water. Just as forests provided essential resources for the ancient Maya, the same is true for our civilization today.”
A UC research team, which will again include archaeologist Vern Scarborough and geographer Nick Dunning, will be returning to Tikal in February 2010. Some of the key questions that remain are how did the Maya control their water resources, when did the deforestation occur, what trees were used when, did the Maya plant large orchards and where were the sacred groves.
“We’re saying in the end they were unsuccessful,” says Lentz. “But they kept it going for several hundreds of years — so they must have done some things right.”
This research was funded by grants from WennerGren and National Science Foundation award #0810118.
Hug a tree, slay a virgin ping.
BFD. Most ancient people knew how to manage their resources so they didn’t starve or run out of raw materials. The successful ones at least.
lol!
Me oh Maya...
So wouldn’t that indicate that this idiocy of worshipping nature and valuing it more than human life is all part of a mind set that has existed for a long time? Some of those ancient cultures are not quite what the academics like to make them out to be. I used wonder why God (in the OT) would tell Israel to destroy a certain group of people until i learned that it often was because they were murderers and practiced horrible child or infant sacrifices.
Take this glyph for example:
It says -
"When it's yellow, let it mellow.
When it's brown, flush it down."
I’m calling BS on this one. I seriously doubt they would have had enough people to wipe out an entire forest—much less even care about replentishing it.
Who comes up with this nonsense?
Tree-Nazi’s with agenda’s?
xactly! How could they affect the world, given the existance of the amazon, africa , which they were probably not aware of.
I think whales and seals did this first though.
Followed by Mayas, then Incas, Aztecs, Egyptians, Zulu...
Then homosexuals, then feminists.
Then people of color.
Then Eskimoes and Native Americans.
Then the white man came and killed them all and raped their children and ate their food, stole their resources and poisoned mother earth. Now honkeywhiteycrackers are warming the whole globe with global warming.
ping
Some years ago, here at FR, there were articles about the Amazon basin being not in a natural state but as planned by defunct human cultures. Despite the tree-hugger kinda feel to this article, they may well be right.
Yeah, they also practiced human sacrifice, but hey at leaast they waited until they were born before sacrificing them.
Man, I wish I coulda been there for that.
I suspect they were done in by their investor class who speculated on the value of trees and raised the price to where the population was thrown out of work building temples. Social disorder set in.
parsy, who fears the rich will always be with us.
The Mayas simply did not have the technology.
Did someone ignore the fact that essentially the entire continents of North and South America were essentially STONE AGE civilizations without steel, without even the WHEEL and were still using pre-historic (by European Standards) construction methods (no keystone)... for them to build large buildings required megalithic stone as they did not yet invent the keystone.
They simply did not have the technology to cut up the fast growing MesoAmerican rainforests fast enough. They also had no need for firewood such as European civilizations as they did not practice animal husbandry and had virtually no animals when compared to Europe, Asia and Africa.
Total BS.
Should clarify:
Forests were not much of a resource for Mayas, so it was ignored. Sort of like a gas station to a man without a car.
Many of Europe’s forests were cut for firewood. Europeans had also developed fine woodworking skills using STEEL saws and tools. The Mayas did not have woodcrafting skills that could be used for architecture as they were essentially stoneage. They did not have iron or steel.
The Mayas did not need to burn firewood to heat their homes. They lived in Mexico where it is warm.
They did not need to cook much food as they did not practice animal husbandry and no stock animals. No chickens, no cattle... nothing. The only Pre-Columbian American civilization that domesticated animals in any numbers were the Peruvians (llamas).
They had no wheels.
They had no iron or steel.
They had no way to cut and process lumber.
They had no need to cook meat except for what was hunted.
They had no need for wood as a fuel or for heating.
The forests were simply not a hugely useful resource.
Stupid academics putting their Socialist/Green/Vegan ideas first and setting the science up to follow their pre-conceived notions.
However, they were fervent vegetarians and like us, had a corn-based diet. Thus, as night follows day, it is clear that the lordly Sapodilla trees were killed by Carbon-based methane emissions from the throngs of well-fed and happy workers who built their temples, while enjoying free health care, including elaborate open-heart surgery.
As the glyphs plainly reveal, Mayan scientists were on the verge of a breech clout-mounted catalytic converter breakthrough, when who should show up but savagely capitalistic Spaniards. Not Hispanics, who are good, but Spaniards. White people from Europe, who are bad.
They set Mayan Civilization back many millenia.
Yeah, it was called “stone axes”.
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