Mayas: research explains the disappearance of one of the most enigmatic civilizations

A group of researchers revealed with a new study carried out in the Chichancanab Lake on the Yucatan Peninsula, that the The Mayan culture has disappeared because of an intense drought.

Academics from the Universities of Cambrige in England and Florida in the United States discovered a mineral formed only when the water level dropped to evaluate three isotopes of oxygen and two hydrogen with which the history of the lake water was rebuilt between 800 and 1000 AD.

In the study published in the Scientific Magazine it was explained that the plaster found saved water molecules who was present in the lake from the moment of his formation.

And there is also a recording of the periods of drought because the lighter isotopes of water evaporated faster, so that they became heavier.

The detected data was concentrated in a map of each layer of plaster, with which changes occurred in the rain and moisture during the Mayan meltdown period and which affected agriculture were estimated.

The Director of the Godwin Laboratory in Cambridge and lead author of this paper recently published in the journal ScienceProfessor David Hodell was the first to explain in 1995 that There was a correlation between the drought in Chichancanab Lake and the disappearance of the inhabitants of the Caribbean region.

But this theory has been proven with the geochemical method that allowed to determine the extent of the water scarcity, by measuring the water included in the plaster of Chichancanab, with which the researchers reconstructed the hydrological conditions during the late civilization of the clbadical terminal period.

With this model, it has been found that annual precipitation has decreased between 41 and 54% and at most up to 70%, this already represented a maximum drought during the fall of the Mayan civilization.

"Our study represents a substantial advance since provides statistically valid estimates of rainfall and moisture levels during Maya's autumnsaid the student from the Department of Earth Sciences in Cambridge and the first author of the article, Nick Evans.

Evans added "the role of climate change in the collapse of the clbadical Mayan civilization is somewhat controversialpartly because previous records are limited to qualitative reconstructions, for example if conditions were wetter or drier. "

Maya culture developed during the pre-clbadical, clbadical, clbadical and post-clbadical periods in the Yucatan, Campeche, Quintana Roo and parts of Chiapas and Tabasco, as well as in Belize, part of Guatemala and the northwestern border of Honduras.

It was in clbadical times that the Mesoamerican civilization flourished and built a great architectural, intellectual and artistic heritage. The DPA agency has detailed that its collapse occurred in the ninth century leaving their famous limestone cities and that ended the dynasties.

He mentioned that there are many theories about the extinction of the Mayans, such as invasion, war, environmental degradation and the collapse of trade routes.