"The Mysterious Maya Collapse"
by Andrew Bosworth
October 1998

      The Maya, who flourished in the Yucatan between 300 and 900 AD, elude understanding. Their calendar, for example, leaves modern scientists scratching their heads. Neither solar nor lunar, this calendar's reliance on the planet Venus and on distant stars allow it to measure vast expanses of time. Befuddling, too, are Maya temples. They are oddly similar in structure to Babylonian ziggurats and, with their hidden burial chambers, to Egyptian pyramids. Not surprisingly, unorthodox theories abound: that the Maya are an offshoot of Atlantis, the mythical sunken civilization, or that they came into contact with extraterrestrials.

      How fitting then that the fall of the Maya is as perplexing as their toward the end of the Maya calendar itself on December 22, 2012, it may be fitting to examine yet another heory of the Maya fall. The Maya, we should remember, were obsessed with time and may have approached the conclusion, or end-point, of some cycle. Fatalistically, the Maya could have simply abandoned their cities for the jungle or even have committed mass suicide - both of which would accord with the fall being rapid and unrecorded.

      Clearly, explanations of the Maya collapse mirror modern political and social concerns. As our own world suffers from war, pollution and rapid population growth, it is understandable that we look to the past for clues to our own future.