[martin_fierro]

I, for one, welcome our Aztlan Overlords.

[Enterprise]

I worship at the altar of diversity.

[SunkenCiv]

:')

Dry Spell Linked to Demise of the Mayan
by Paul Recer
Thu Mar 13, 2003 5:27 PM ET

Konrad A. Hughen, a geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said sediments from the Cariaco Basin in northern Venezuela clearly record a long dry siege that struck the entire Caribbean starting in about the seventh century and lasting more than 100 years. Within this dry period, said Hughen, there were years of virtually no rainfall. It was in those periods of extra dryness, he said, that the Mayan civilization went through a series of collapses before its final demise... The civilization collapsed and many of the sites were abandoned early in the 800s. They were later reoccupied only to collapse again, with some cities deserted in 860 and others in 910... A severe dry spell in 910, he said, "was the last straw."