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122-427: Maya society underwent a series of profound transformations between c. 100 AD and 250 AD, which resulted in the cessation of monumental building at many Preclassic cities and the inferred collapse of their political and economic systems, often characterized as the "Preclassic Collapse ." The roots of Maya civilization remain obscure, although broad parameters are increasingly well known. Paleo-environmental data indicate

244-474: A 2015 study done on the sacbeob of Ceren. It is possible that many non-stone sacbeob once existed throughout Maya territory, however evidence of these earthen roads are limited, as they do not preserve as well. The word Sacbe meaning the white jungle pathways used by the Maya comes from a combination of two Mayan words, "sac" meaning white and "be" or "beh" meaning way, road, or pathway. The word "Beh" operates as

366-724: A cascade of events. Attila rose to power as leader of the Huns and initiated a campaign of invasions and looting and went as far as Gaul (modern-day France). Attila's Huns were clashing with the Roman Empire, which had already been divided into two-halves for ease of administration: the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire . Despite managing to stop Attila at the Battle of Chalons in 451 AD,

488-454: A causal connection between climate change and large-scale human crises in pre-industrial times. Short-term crises may be caused by social problems, but climate change was the ultimate cause of major crises, starting with economic depressions. Moreover, since agriculture is highly dependent on climate, any changes to the regional climate from the optimum can induce crop failures. After around 1130, North America had significant climatic change in

610-467: A chronicler from the 16th or 17th century, who noted that "there are remains of paved highways which traverse all this kingdom". Sacbeob had a number of practical uses in addition to any religious significance they may have had. In addition to their large spiritual significance, archeologists have long used the Sacbe to construct and understand the political and economic systems of the Maya. By understanding

732-434: A civilization in its "winter" would see a disinclination for abstract thinking. The psychologists David Rand and Jonathan Cohen theorized that people switch between two broad modes of thinking. The first is fast and automatic but rigid, and the second is slow and analytical but more flexible. Rand and Cohen believe that explains why people continue with self-destructive behaviors when logical reasoning would have alerted them of

854-493: A clear differentiation between total or partial decline and "possibilities of regeneration" is crucial for the preventive purpose of the study of societal collapse. This frame of reference often rejects the term collapse and critiques the notion that cultures simply vanish when the political structures that organize labor for large archaeologically prominent projects do. For example, while the Ancient Maya are often touted as

976-523: A combination of overcrowding, poor hygiene, and unhealthy diets. They quickly became epicenters. Soon, the disease reached as far as Gaul and mauled Roman defenses along the Rhine. The ranks of the previously formidable Roman army had to be filled with freed slaves, German mercenaries, criminals, and gladiators. That ultimately failed to prevent the Germanic tribes from crossing the Rhine. On the civilian side,

1098-881: A continuous political structure," from 3000 BC to 600 AD and calculated that the average life span of a civilization is close to 340 years. Of them, the most durable were the Kushite Kingdom in Northeast Africa (1,150 years), the Aksumite Empire in East Africa (1,100 years), and the Vedic civilization in South Asia and the Olmecs in Mesoamerica (both 1,000 years), and the shortest-lived were

1220-459: A decline in trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia caused the collapse. Evidence for earthquakes has also been discovered. Sea level changes are also found at two possible seaport sites along the Makran coast which are now inland. Earthquakes may have contributed to decline of several sites by direct shaking damage or by changes in sea level or in water supply. Volcanic eruptions can abruptly influence

1342-567: A diet dominated by maize, and the use of the cacao plant. Several words entered Mayan from a Mixe–Zoquean language, presumably due to Olmec influence. Many of these borrowings relate to prestige concepts and high culture, indicating that the Middle Preclassic Maya were deeply impressed and influenced by their northwestern neighbors. The Late Preclassic saw the rise of two powerful states that rival later Classic Maya city-states for scale and monumental architecture, Kaminaljuyu in

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1464-585: A lack of medical knowledge, superstitions, and sometimes a combination of disasters exacerbated the problem. The journalist Michael Rosenwald wrote that "history shows that past pandemics have reshaped societies in profound ways. Hundreds of millions of people have died. Empires have fallen. Governments have cracked. Generations have been annihilated." From the description of symptoms by the Greek physician Galen , which included coughing, fever, (blackish) diarrhea, swollen throat, and thirst, modern experts identified

1586-454: A major component of the diet. Along with the gradual development of agriculture, basic forms of pottery began to appear, with simple designs and some slipped vessels. Around this time, the Olmec culture began to emerge in nearby Tabasco, granting the early Maya an important trading partner and beginning a period of prolonged contact that would have profound effects on Maya society. By around

1708-736: A massive expansion throughout Eurasia, which is considered to be associated with the dispersal of the Indo-European languages by most contemporary linguists, archaeologists, and geneticists. The expansion of WSHs resulted in the virtual disappearance of the Y-DNA of Early European Farmers (EEFs) from the European gene pool, significantly altering the cultural and genetic landscape of Europe. EEF mtDNA however remained frequent, suggesting admixture between WSH males and EEF females. A mysterious loose confederation of fierce maritime marauders known as

1830-631: A more primitive state, be absorbed into a stronger society, or completely disappear. Virtually all civilizations have suffered such a fate, regardless of their size or complexity. Most never recovered, such as the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, the Maya civilization , and the Easter Island civilization . However, some of them later revived and transformed, such as China, Greece, and Egypt. Anthropologists, historians, and sociologists have proposed

1952-399: A myriad of consumer goods rose. Society became wealthier and could afford to fund the arts and the sciences. Encounters between European explorers and Native Americans exposed the latter to a variety of diseases of extraordinary virulence. Having migrated from Northeastern Asia 15,000 years ago, Native Americans had not been introduced to the plethora of contagious diseases that emerged after

2074-565: A nomadic one. In China, for example, a combination of war, famine, and pestilence during the Mongol conquests halved the population, a decline of around 55 million people. The Mongols also displaced large numbers of people and created power vacuums. The Khmer Empire went into decline and was replaced by the Thais, who were pushed southward by the Mongols. The Vietnamese, who succeeded in defeating

2196-732: A period of cooling in the Northern Hemisphere between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the Medieval Warm Period was giving way to the Little Ice Age, which caused ecological stress. In Europe, the cooling climate did not directly facilitate the Black Death , but it caused wars, mass migration, and famine, which helped diseases spread. A more recent example is the General Crisis of

2318-563: A prime example of collapse, in reality this reorganization was simply the result of the removal of the political system of Divine Kingship largely in the eastern lowlands as many cities in the western highlands of Mesoamerica maintained this system of divine kingship into the 16th century. The Maya continue to maintain cultural and linguistic continuity into the present day. The social scientist Luke Kemp analyzed dozens of civilizations, which he defined as "a society with agriculture, multiple cities, military dominance in its geographical region and

2440-431: A reminder of the relationship between the groups that occupied a specific sacbe. By jointly participating in the construction and frequent maintenance of these roadways, it is believed that societies could further solidify their allyship. Movement may hold a certain ceremonial and spiritual power in Maya culture. According to some Mayan beliefs some forms of illness can be diagnosed by the movement of various forces through

2562-590: A result of a built-up youth bulge. As those trends intensified, they jeopardized the social fabric, which facilitated the decline. Historical theories have evolved from being purely social and ethical, to ideological and ethnocentric, and finally to multidisciplinary studies. They have become much more sophisticated. The anthropologist Joseph Tainter theorized that collapsed societies essentially exhausted their own designs and were unable to adapt to natural diminishing returns for what they knew as their method of survival. The philosopher Oswald Spengler argued that

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2684-505: A seminal and founding work of the academic discipline on societal collapse. He elaborates that 'collapse' is a "broad term," but in the sense of societal collapse, he views it as "a political process." He further narrows societal collapse as a rapid process (within "few decades") of "substantial loss of sociopolitical structure," giving the fall of the Western Roman Empire as "the most widely known instance of collapse" in

2806-473: A short ritual prayer when crossing a sacbe in the early 1840s, even though they had been overgrown with jungle for centuries at the time. He is said to have been pleased to have discovered evidence of large, well-constructed sacbeob, reports of which he had previously believed to be exaggerations on the part of the Spanish conquistadores . These preliminary reports included that of Diego López de Cogolludo ,

2928-552: A significant part. Similar events took place in Oceania and Madagascar. Smallpox was externally brought to Australia. The first recorded outbreak, in 1789, devastated the Aboriginal population. The extent of the outbreak is disputed, but some sources claim that it killed about 50% of coastal Aboriginal populations on the east coast. There is an ongoing historical debate concerning two rival and irreconcilable theories about how

3050-433: A variety of explanations for the collapse of civilizations involving causative factors such as environmental degradation, depletion of resources, costs of rising complexity, invasion, disease, decay of social cohesion, growing inequality , extractive institutions , long-term decline of cognitive abilities , loss of creativity , and misfortune. However, complete extinction of a culture is not inevitable, and in some cases,

3172-477: A very plausible theory that the Sacbe held significant spiritual and religious value, in the sense that the actual trekking of the Sacbe itself seemed to be a spiritual journey of sorts. Sacbeob constructed of these materials are especially important to contemporary studies of Maya sites, as they preserve well, making them capable of providing invaluable evidence to archaeologists. Maya "Sacbeob varied greatly in construction, length, width, and function" according to

3294-658: A war of succession to the Bohemian throne. Animosity between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire (in modern-day Germany) added fuel to the fire. Soon, it escalated to a huge conflict that involved all major European powers and devastated much of Germany. When the war had ended, some regions of the empire had seen their populations drop by as much as 70%. However, not all societies faced crises during this period. Tropical countries with high carrying capacities and trading economies did not suffer much because

3416-405: Is a raised paved road built by the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica . Most connect temples, plazas, and groups of structures within ceremonial centers or cities, but some longer roads between cities are also known. The term "sacbe" is Yucatec Maya for "white road"; white perhaps because there is evidence that they were originally coated with limestone stucco or plaster, which

3538-404: Is actually more the sign of hidden weakness because of a society's dependence on it and its potential to undermine its own basis for success by not being self limiting , as demonstrated in Western culture's ideal of perpetual growth. As a population grows and technology makes it easier to exploit depleting resources, the environment's diminishing returns are hidden from view. Societal complexity

3660-586: Is also believed to be spiritually significant. The connection made between sacbeob and the Milky Way has also been theorized to be connected to the Maya concept of the World Tree , or Wakah-Chan . In this way, the sacbeob acted as an axis mundi , meaning that to some extent, sacbeob may have functioned as a model for the Maya universe. Similarly, at the site of El Mirador , sacbeob seem to have been constructed to represent an astronomical alignment between

3782-815: Is difficult to say for certain whether Egypt would have become a Roman province if Okmok volcano (in modern-day Alaska) had not erupted, the eruption likely hastened the process. More generally, recent research pointed to climate change as a key player in the decline and fall of historical societies in China, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. In fact, paleoclimatogical temperature reconstruction suggests that historical periods of social unrest, societal collapse, and population crash and significant climate change often occurred simultaneously. A team of researchers from Mainland China and Hong Kong were able to establish

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3904-495: Is perhaps the most common feature of collapse. In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed , Jared Diamond proposes five interconnected causes of collapse that may reinforce each other: non-sustainable exploitation of resources, climate changes, diminishing support from friendly societies, hostile neighbors, and inappropriate attitudes for change. Sacbeob A sacbe , plural sacbeob ( Yucatec Maya : singular sakbej , plural sakbejo'ob ), or "white road",

4026-474: Is the fall of a complex human society characterized by the loss of cultural identity and of social complexity as an adaptive system , the downfall of government , and the rise of violence . Possible causes of a societal collapse include natural catastrophe, war , pestilence , famine , economic collapse , population decline or overshoot , mass migration , incompetent leaders, and sabotage by rival civilizations. A collapsed society may revert to

4148-400: Is the result of the work of corvée labor groups. This theory has been supported by the existence of completed sacbeob segments next to unstarted ones. Besides practical function, the symbolic functions of sacbeob are critical to understanding their significance in Maya culture. Sacbeob served to provide both a physical and symbolic link between two places. It is argued that this link served as

4270-416: Is then potentially threatened if it develops beyond what is actually sustainable, and a disorderly reorganization were to follow. The scissors model of Malthusian collapse, in which the population grows without limit but not resources, is the idea of great opposing environmental forces cutting into each other. The complete breakdown of economic, cultural, and social institutions with ecological relationships

4392-538: The Indus script has yet to be deciphered, the causes of its de-urbanization remain a mystery, but there is some evidence pointing to natural disasters. Signs of a gradual decline began to emerge in 1900 BC, and two centuries later, most of the cities had been abandoned. Archeological evidence suggests an increase in interpersonal violence and in infectious diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis . Historians and archeologists believe that severe and long-lasting drought and

4514-455: The Milky Way is also Sacbe . The fulfilment of one's destiny is considered the fulfilment of their "road." Seeing that movement, roads, and the cosmos are important to Mayan mythos, the conflation of Sacbe with the Milky Way suggests a ceremonial importance of Sacbe . Sacbeob have been observed to correspond to the four cardinal directions when extending from pilgrimage centers, which

4636-954: The Nanda Empire in India (24) and the Qin dynasty in China (14). A statistical analysis of empires by complex systems specialist Samuel Arbesman suggests that collapse is generally a random event and does not depend on age. That is analogous to what evolutionary biologists call the Red Queen hypothesis , which asserts that for a species in a harsh ecology, extinction is a persistent possibility. Contemporary discussions about societal collapse are seeking resilience by suggesting societal transformation. Because human societies are complex systems, common factors may contribute to their decline that are economical, environmental, demographic, social and cultural, and they may cascade into another and build up to

4758-998: The Sea Peoples was identified as one of the main causes of the Late Bronze Age Collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean. It is possible that the Sea Peoples were themselves victims of the environmental changes that led to widespread famine and precipitated the Collapse. In the third century BC, a Eurasian nomadic people, the Xiongnu , began threatening China's frontiers, but by the first century BC, they had been completely expelled. They then turned their attention westward and displaced various other tribes in Eastern and Central Europe, which led to

4880-489: The Sun and Venus , which has been analyzed as further evidence of sacbeob holding a religious significance. The Coba causeways are also theorized to be intentionally aligned with certain stars. At the ancient site of Cerèn, tephra , a volcanic material gathered from a previous eruption, was used to construct the local sacbe. The societal and environmental impacts of this past eruption are thought to have been enormous. Therefore,

5002-539: The Terminal Pre-classic period onwards. In 2010, archaeologists at Chiapa de Corzo , southern Chiapas , Mexico, announced they have found a dignitary's tomb inside a pyramid that may be the oldest type of burial discovered in Mesoamerica . The grave dates from about 2,700 years ago. Societal collapse Societal collapse (also known as civilizational collapse or systems collapse )

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5124-731: The Visigoths in 410 and was plundered by the Vandals in 455 . A combination of internal strife, economic weakness, and relentless invasions by the Germanic peoples pushed the Western Roman Empire into terminal decline . The last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus , was dethroned in 476 by the German Odoacer , who declared himself King of Italy . In the eleventh century AD, North Africa 's populous and flourishing civilization collapsed after it had exhausted its resources in internal fighting and suffering devastation from

5246-459: The root term for "Sacbe". Beh is spelled alternately as Be, bej, bey, be, bih, as well as "beel" in the possessive. It has many distinctions from English concepts of roads, pathways, or trails. Beh's metaphoric meanings are just as important if not more important than its literal meaning of "road." Ethnographers working the lowlands have noted that it means "more than the road you see with your eyes." The term Beh refers to "the road of life". In

5368-580: The 1340s, Black Death killed 200 million people. The widening trade routes in the Late Middle Ages helped the plague spread rapidly. It took the European population more than two centuries to return to its level before the pandemic. Consequently, it destabilized most of society and likely undermined feudalism and the authority of the Church. With labor in short supply, workers' bargaining power increased dramatically. Various inventions that reduced

5490-745: The 1520s and killed 150,000 in Tenochtitlán alone, including the emperor, and Peru in the 1530s, which aided the European conquerors. A combination of Spanish military attacks and evolutionarily novel diseases finished off the Aztec Empire in the sixteenth century. It is commonly believed that the death of as much as 90% or 95% of the Native American population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases, though new research suggests tuberculosis from seals and sea lions played

5612-472: The Antonine Plague created drastic shortages of businessmen, which disrupted trade, and farmers, which led to a food crisis. An economic depression followed and government revenue fell. Some accused Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Co-Emperor Lucius Verus , both of whom victims of the disease, of affronting the gods , but others blamed Christians. However, the Antonine Plague strengthened the position of

5734-533: The Classic Maya city of Holmul located in modern-day Guatemala , boasts what may be the royal tomb of the earliest known Maya ruler. This tomb has been dated to 350–300 BC, and it contains the earliest evidence of the institution of ajaw (ruler) in the Maya Lowlands. Early Maya architecture is based on the general Mesoamerican architectural traditions. The stepped pyramids were constructed from

5856-536: The Colonial times "Sacbe" was translated as calzada , which is Spanish for "main road/Highway." The literal translation of Sacbe is "white road." This is used to refer to large Mayan constructed roads covered in a white (Sac) surfacing. Many sacbeob can be seen by modern visitors to Maya sites; a prominent one is at Chichen Itza , running from the main group around El Castillo to the Sacred Cenote . Few of

5978-612: The Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada deduced that a volcanic eruption occurred in 43 BC, a year after the assassination of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March (15 March) in 44 BC, which left a power vacuum and led to bloody civil wars. According to historical accounts, it was also a period of poor weather, crop failure, widespread famine, and disease. Analyses of tree rings and cave stalagmites from different parts of

6100-578: The Eastern Mediterranean disrupted established trade routes and caused widespread economic depression. Government workers became underpaid, which resulted in the first labor strike in recorded history and undermined royal authority. There was also political infighting between different factions of government. Bad harvest from the reduced flooding at the Nile led to a major famine. Food prices rose to eight times their normal values and occasionally even reached twenty-four times. Runaway inflation followed. Attacks by

6222-746: The Great to concentrate on recapturing territories belonging to the Western Empire. His generals, Belisarius and Narses , achieved a number of important victories against the Ostrogoths and the Vandals. However, their hope of keeping the Western Empire was dashed by the arrival of what became known as the Plague of Justinian (541-542). According to the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea ,

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6344-754: The Justinian Plague, the Mediterranean world had been commercially and culturally stable. After the Plague, it fractured into a trio of civilizations battling for power: the Islamic Civilization, the Byzantine Empire, and what later became known as Medieval Europe. With so many people dead, the supply of workers, many of whom were slaves, was critically short. Landowners had no choice but to lend pieces of land to serfs to work

6466-582: The Kaminaljuyu polity engaged in active warfare, dominating the Guatemalan highlands for centuries. Kaminaljuyu's main export was the essential resource obsidian , a beautiful volcanic glass that easily fractured into sharp edges, providing arrowheads, knives, and other weapons as well as prestige goods like mirrors. Although it is difficult to firmly identify the ethnicity of a people from meager archeological remains, it appears that during this period

6588-777: The Libyans and Nubians made things even worse. Throughout the Twentieth Dynasty (~1187–1064 BC), Egypt devolved from a major power in the Mediterranean to a deeply divided and weakened state, which later came to be ruled by the Libyans and the Nubians. Between 481 BC and 221 BC, the Period of the Warring States in China ended by King Zheng of the Qin dynasty succeeding in defeating six competing factions and thus becoming

6710-435: The Loma Caldera eruption of the San Salvador volcano . Some sacbeob that have been studied in the northwest Yucatán seem to have been constructed at times of conflict, rapid population growth and migration, and they have been interpreted by some as "permanent markers attesting to the relationships between dominant centers and satellite settlements," effectively a way of signifying and maintaining political boundaries. While

6832-565: The Maya are also known to have used water routes. There is a wealth of evidence of mounds, often interpreted as remains of huts or way stations for travelers, along large sacbeob. Looking at the large sacbe connecting Kabah to Uxmal , natives told John Lloyd Stephens that ancient Maya couriers used the sacbeob to deliver messages between large cities. At Ake in the Yucatán , several sacbeob lead directly to cenotes , which serve both as important religious sites and sources of clean water. Stone stelae and platforms were frequently added to

6954-465: The Maya began a systematic northward expansion, occupying the Petén Basin where such cities as El Mirador , Tikal , Calakmul , and Tayasal would be built. The dominant site of these early colonists was Nakbe in the El Mirador basin, where the first attested Maya ballcourt and sacbeob (stone causeways) were built. The rulers of Nakbe constructed several stone platforms and erected intricately carved stone and stucco monuments. During this period,

7076-421: The Mongols, also turned their attention to the south and by 1471 began to subjugate the Chams . When Vietnam's Later Lê dynasty went into decline in the late 1700s, a bloody civil war erupted between the Trịnh family in the north and the Nguyễn family in the south. More Cham provinces were seized by the Nguyễn warlords. Finally, Nguyễn Ánh emerged victorious and declared himself Emperor of Vietnam (changing

7198-490: The Olmec culture reached its zenith, centered on the capital of La Venta in modern-day Tabasco near the early Maya centers. Speakers of a Mixe–Zoquean language, the Olmec are generally recognized as the first true civilization in North America. Their capital city of La Venta contains extensive earthworks and stone monuments, including several of the distinctive Olmec stone heads. The Olmec share several features with later Maya culture, including extensive jaguar-worship ,

7320-409: The Roman, medieval, and early modern eras, of Egypt during Greco-Roman and Ottoman rule, and of various dynasties in China all showed similar patterns of political instability and violence becoming considerably more common after times of relative peace, prosperity, and sustained population growth. Quantitatively, periods of unrest included many times more events of instability per decade and occurred when

7442-510: The Romans began to devalue the currency and produce more coinage. Eventually, this overwhelmed the Roman Empire and partially contributed to its collapse. Several key features of human societal collapse can be related to population dynamics. For example, the native population of Cusco, Peru at the time of the Spanish conquest was stressed by an imbalanced sex ratio . There is strong evidence that humans also display population cycles . Societies as diverse as those of England and France during

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7564-450: The Romans were unable to prevent Attila from attacking Roman Italy the next year. Northern Italian cities like Milan were ravaged. The Huns never again posed a threat to the Romans after Attila's death, but the rise of the Huns also forced the Germanic peoples out of their territories and made those groups press their way into parts of France, Spain, Italy, and even as far south as North Africa. The city of Rome itself came under attack by

7686-572: The Sacred Cenote of Chichen Itza, which acts as a terminal point for a local sacbe. Other sites have reservoirs positioned closely to sacbeob, including the site at Caracol . At Coba , there are more than 50 sacbeob still visible today. Some researchers believe that some of the sacbeob were used to divide the population of about 55,000 people into at least four barrios or neighborhoods. Many smaller sacbeob fall in places around sources of water or other high-traffic areas like ceremonial or administrative centers. Two much larger sacbeob connect Coba to

7808-444: The Seventeenth Century in Europe, which was a period of inclement weather, crop failure, economic hardship, extreme intergroup violence, and high mortality because of the Little Ice Age . The Maunder Minimum involved sunspots being exceedingly rare. Episodes of social instability track the cooling with a time lap of up to 15 years, and many developed into armed conflicts, such as the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), which started as

7930-467: The Western world. Others, particularly in response to the popular Collapse (2005) by Jared Diamond and more recently, have argued that societies discussed as cases of collapse are better understood through resilience and societal transformation , or "reorganization", especially if collapse is understood as a "complete end" of political systems, which according to Shmuel Eisenstadt has not taken place at any point. Eisenstadt also points out that

8052-504: The advent of antibiotics, starting with penicillin in 1928, has resulted in the saving of the lives of hundreds of millions of people suffering from bacterial infections. However, there is no guarantee that would continue because bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics , and doctors and public health experts such as former Chief Medical Officer for England Sally Davies have even warned of an incoming "antibiotic apocalypse." The World Health Organization warned in 2019 that

8174-405: The appearance of mass graves and decapitated skeletons. Beginning around 900 BC, the Pacific coastal region fell under the dominance of the La Blanca statelet, which collapsed around 600BC, to be replaced by a polity centered on the El Ujuxte site. Another early statelet was probably based at the site of Chalchuapa , a town with extensive earthen mounds arranged around several plazas. However, it

8296-561: The beginning of the construction of the Maya city-states that would flourish years later. The centuries of agricultural village life had begun to form the beginnings of a complex society: Prestige goods such as obsidian mirrors and jade mosaics began to appear, increasing the demand for more extensive trade. Canals and irrigation schemes demanding coordinated human effort began to appear with increasing complexity and scale. Gradually, villages began to include central plazas and earthen mounds, occasionally enhanced by masonry. For instance,

8418-460: The body and the world. Rituals, including curing the sick, pilgrimage , procession, and dedication, involve movement as a generative source of power, capable of change and influence. It has been recorded that " sacbeob were frequently joined to important temple and palace architecture by ramps or stairways, making them part of large, complex ritual stations", further highlighting their religious importance. The present day and colonial Maya term for

8540-418: The brutal pillaging that followed Mongol invasions during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the invaders decimated the populations of China, Russia, the Middle East, and Islamic Central Asia . Later Mongol leaders, such as Timur , destroyed many cities, slaughtered thousands of people, and irreparably damaged the ancient irrigation systems of Mesopotamia . The invasions transformed a settled society to

8662-447: The case of the Western Roman Empire, some argued that it did not collapse but merely transformed . Archeologists have identified signs of a megadrought which lasted for a millennium between 5,000 and 4,000 years ago in Africa and Asia. The drying of the Green Sahara not only turned it into a desert but also disrupted the monsoon seasons in South and Southeast Asia and caused flooding in East Asia, which prevented successful harvests and

8784-490: The changing climate did not induce an economic depression in those places. Between ca. 4000 and 3000 BCE, neolithic populations in western Eurasia declined , probably due to the plague and other viral hemorrhagic fevers. This decline was followed by the Indo-European migrations . Around 3,000 BC, people of the pastoralist Yamnaya culture from the Pontic–Caspian steppe , who had high levels of WSH ancestry, embarked on

8906-521: The climate. During a large eruption, sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) is expelled into the stratosphere , where it could stay for years and gradually get oxidized into sulfate aerosols. Being highly reflective, sulfate aerosols reduce the incident sunlight and cool the Earth's surface. By drilling into glaciers and ice sheets, scientists can access the archives of the history of atmospheric composition. A team of multidisciplinary researchers led by Joseph McConnell of

9028-508: The collapse alone. Significant inequity and exposed corruption may combine with lack of loyalty to established political institutions and result in an oppressed lower class rising up and seizing power from a smaller wealthy elite in a revolution . The diversity of forms that societies evolve corresponds to diversity in their failures. Jared Diamond suggests that societies have also collapsed through deforestation , loss of soil fertility, restrictions of trade and/or rising endemic violence. In

9150-407: The cost of labor, saved time, and raised productivity, such as the three-field crop rotation system, the iron plow, the use of manure to fertilize the soil, and the water pumps, were widely adopted. Many former serfs, now free from feudal obligations, relocated to the cities and changed profession to crafts and trades. The more successful ones became the new middle class. Trade flourished as demands for

9272-450: The dangers ahead. People switch from the second to the first mode of thinking after the introduction of an invention that dramatically increases the standards of living. Rand and Cohen pointed to the recent examples of the antibiotic overuse leading to resistant bacteria and failure to save for retirement. Tainter noted that according to behavioral economics, the human decision-making process tends to be more irrational than rational and that as

9394-560: The decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire. It was followed by the Plague of Cyprian (249–262 AD) and the Plague of Justinian (541-542). Together, they cracked the foundations of the Roman Empire. In the sixth century AD, while the Western Roman Empire had already succumbed to attacks by the Germanic tribes, the Eastern Roman Empire stood its ground. In fact, a peace treaty with the Persians allowed Emperor Justinian

9516-604: The development of complex culture. It coincided with and may have caused the decline and the fall of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley Civilization. The dramatic shift in climate is known as the 4.2-kiloyear event . The highly advanced Indus Valley Civilization took root around 3000 BC in what is now northwestern India and Pakistan and collapsed around 1700 BC. Since

9638-547: The disease first entered the continent (see History of smallpox ). Smallpox continued to be a deadly disease and killed an estimated 300 million people in the twentieth century alone, but a vaccine, the first of any kind, had been available since 1796. As humans spread around the globe, human societies flourish and become more dependent on trade, and because urbanization means that people leave sparsely-populated rural areas for densely-populated neighborhoods, infectious diseases spread much more easily. Outbreaks are frequent, even in

9760-841: The early fourteenth century AD, Britain suffered repeated rounds of crop failures from unusually heavy rainfall and flooding. Much livestock either starved or drowned. Food prices skyrocketed, and King Edward II attempted to rectify the situation by imposing price controls, but vendors simply refused to sell at such low prices. In any case, the act was abolished by the Lincoln Parliament in 1316. Soon, people from commoners to nobles were finding themselves short of food. Many resorted to begging, crime, and eating animals they otherwise would not eat. People in northern England had to deal with raids from Scotland. There were even reports of cannibalism . In Continental Europe, things were at least just as bad. The Great Famine of 1315–1317 coincided with

9882-668: The elite than the society could realistically support ( elite overproduction ), which led to social strife, and chronic inflation, which caused incomes to fall and threatened the fiscal health of the state. In particular, an excess in especially young adult male population predictably led to social unrest and violence, as the third and higher-order parity sons had trouble realizing their economic desires and became more open to extreme ideas and actions. Adults in their 20s are especially prone to radicalization. Most historical periods of social unrest lacking in external triggers, such as natural calamities, and most genocides can be readily explained as

10004-638: The end of the Medieval Warm Period and the start of the Little Ice Age. Some historians suspect that the change in climate was due to Mount Tarawera in New Zealand erupting in 1314. The Great Famine was, however, only one of the calamities striking Europe that century, as the Hundred Years' War and Black Death would soon follow. (Also see the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages .) Recent analysis of tree rings complement historical records and show that

10126-478: The epidemic originated in China and Northeastern India and reached the Eastern Roman Empire via trade routes terminating in the Mediterranean. Modern scholarship has deduced that the epidemic was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis , the same one that would later bring the Black Death, the single deadliest pandemic in human history, but how many actually died from it remains uncertain. Current estimates put

10248-781: The figure between thirty and fifty million people, a significant portion of the human population at that time. The Plague arguably cemented the fate of Rome. The epidemic also devastated the Sasanian Empire in Persia. Caliph Abu Bakr seized the opportunity to launch military campaigns that overran the Sassanians and captured Roman-held territories in the Caucasus, the Levant, Egypt, and elsewhere in North Africa. Before

10370-655: The first Chinese emperor, titled Qin Shi Huang . A ruthless but efficient ruler, he raised a disciplined and professional army and introduced a significant number of reforms, such as unifying the language and creating a single currency and system of measurement. In addition, he funded dam constructions and began building the first segment of what was to become the Great Wall of China to defend his realm against northern nomads. Nevertheless, internal feuds and rebellions made his empire fall apart after his death in 210 B.C. In

10492-661: The first and only war between Vietnam and the jihadists, until it was crushed. Around 1210 BC, the New Kingdom of Egypt shipped large amounts of grain to the disintegrating Hittite Empire. Thus, there had been a food shortage in Anatolia but not the Nile Valley. However, that soon changed. Although Egypt managed to deliver a decisive and final defeat to the Sea Peoples at the Battle of Xois , Egypt itself went into steep decline. The collapse of all other societies in

10614-589: The first at the end of the Preclassic, and the more famous Classic Maya collapse . The "Preclassic collapse" refers to the systematic decline and abandoning of the major Preclassic cities such as El Mirador around 100 AD. A number of theories have been proposed to explain this collapse, but there is as little consensus here as there is for the causes of the more famous collapse leading to the Postclassic period. The archaeological site of Kʼo , associated with

10736-590: The form of a 300-year period of aridity called the Great Drought . The Mississippian culture collapsed during this period. The Ancestral Puebloans left their established homes in the 12th and 13th centuries. Current scholarly consensus is that Ancestral Puebloans responded to pressure from Numic -speaking peoples moving onto the Colorado Plateau, as well as climate change that resulted in agricultural failures. The Mongol conquests corresponded to

10858-595: The globe provided complementary data. The Northern Hemisphere got drier, but the Southern Hemisphere became wetter. Indeed, the Greek historian Appian recorded that there was a lack of flooding in Egypt, which also faced famine and pestilence. Rome's interest in Egypt as a source of food intensified, and the aforementioned problems and civil unrest weakened Egypt's ability to resist. Egypt came under Roman rule after Cleopatra committed suicide in 30 BC. While it

10980-463: The high levels of poverty, the Roman government implemented a form of welfare called the dole , providing citizens free money and free grain. Paying for the dole required high levels of government spending, exacerbating the Roman debt and also producing inflation. With slavery replacing most labor, tax revenues also plummeted, further exacerbating the government's debt. To pay off the enormous debt,

11102-489: The highlands and El Mirador in the lowlands. The late or terminal Preclassic murals found in San Bartolo provide important information regarding mythology and royal inauguration ritual around 100 BC. The story of the mysterious lost civilization that suddenly collapsed for an unknown reason has captured the popular imagination for well over a century. What is not as widely known is that there were two such "collapses",

11224-482: The invasion of the Bedouin tribes of Banu Sulaym and Banu Hilal . Ibn Khaldun noted that all of the lands ravaged by Banu Hilal invaders had become arid desert. In 1206, a warlord achieved dominance over all Mongols with the title Genghis Khan and began his campaign of territorial expansion. The Mongols' highly flexible and mobile cavalry enabled them to conquer their enemies with efficiency and swiftness. In

11346-409: The jobs of skilled craftsman. Since slaves do not pay taxes and were replacing most jobs from citizens, this reduced the revenue the state could accrue from their citizens. This high level of unemployment also led to high levels of poverty, which reduced demand for businesses relying on slave labor. As taxes fell, so did government revenue. To compensate for this economic slowdown and mitigate

11468-403: The land in exchange for military protection and other privileges. That sowed the seeds of feudalism . There is evidence that the Mongol expeditions may have spread the bubonic plague across much of Eurasia, which helped to spark the Black Death of the early fourteenth century. The Italian historian Gabriele de’ Mussi wrote that the Mongols catapulted the corpses of those who contracted

11590-418: The larger connection between settlements along the Sacbe, archeologists have been able to gain a larger understanding into the political and social network that the Sacbe facilitated. Longer sacbeob could be used for trade and communication. The Maya did not have a beast of burden suitable for carrying goods over long distances, so it is likely that the sacbeob would have been regularly walked by traders, though

11712-419: The longer roads still exist in their entirety. A well-known sacbe connects Uxmal with Kabah , which is marked by corbel arches at either end. The 62-mile-long (100 km) road connecting the ancient cities of Coba and Yaxuna was for decades the longest known to archaeologists . The remains of an even longer route have recently received the attention of archaeologists. This long sacbe apparently ran from

11834-404: The modern era, but medical advances have been able to alleviate their impacts. In fact, the human population grew tremendously in the twentieth century, as did the population of farm animals, from which diseases could jump to humans , but in the developed world and increasingly also in the developing world, people are less likely to fall victim to infectious diseases than ever before. For instance,

11956-426: The monotheistic religion of Christianity in the formerly-polytheistic society, as Christians won public admiration for their good works. Ultimately the Roman army, the Roman cities, the size of the empire and its trade routes, which were required for Roman power and influence to exist, facilitated the spread of the disease. The Antonine Plague is considered by some historians as a useful starting point for understanding

12078-489: The name from Annam) with the title Gia Long and established the Nguyễn dynasty. The last remaining principality of Champa, Panduranga (modern-day Phan Rang , Vietnam), survived until 1832, when Emperor Minh Mạng (Nguyễn Phúc Đảm) conquered it after centuries of Cham–Vietnamese wars . Vietnam's policy of assimilation involved the forcefeeding of pork to Muslims and beef to Hindus, which fueled resentment. An uprising followed ,

12200-646: The new societies that arise from the ashes of the old one are evidently its offspring, despite a dramatic reduction in sophistication. Moreover, the influence of a collapsed society, such as the Western Roman Empire, may linger on long after its death. The study of societal collapse, collapsology , is a topic for specialists of history , anthropology , sociology , and political science . More recently, they are joined by experts in cliodynamics and study of complex systems . Joseph Tainter frames societal collapse in The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988),

12322-452: The past on this topic is further complicated by politics and the passage of time. It is difficult to distinguish between natural epidemics and biological warfare, both of which are common throughout human history. Biological weapons are economical because they turn an enemy casualty into a delivery system and so were favored in armed conflicts of the past. Furthermore, more soldiers died of disease than in combat until recently. In any case, by

12444-501: The plague into Caffa (now Feodossia , Crimea) during the siege of that city and that soldiers who were transported from there brought the plague to Mediterranean ports. However, that account of the origin of the Black Death in Europe remains controversial, though plausible, because of the complex epidemiology of the plague. Modern epidemiologists do not believe that the Black Death had a single source of spreading into Europe. Research into

12566-538: The point that could overwhelm any mechanisms that would otherwise maintain stability. Unexpected and abrupt changes, which experts call nonlinearities , are some of the warning signs. In some cases, a natural disaster (such as a tsunami, earthquake, pandemic , massive fire or climate change) may precipitate a collapse. Other factors such as a Malthusian catastrophe , overpopulation , or resource depletion might be contributory factors of collapse, but studies of past societies seem to suggest that those factors did not cause

12688-401: The population was declining, rather than increasing. Pre-industrial agrarian societies typically faced instability after one or two centuries of stability. However, a population approaching its carrying capacity alone is not enough to trigger general decline if the people remained united and the ruling class strong. Other factors had to be involved, such as having more aspirants for positions of

12810-651: The power to penetrate dense forest cover to reveal the sacbeob below, and is a sound alternative to LiDAR or traditional mapping practices, as they are often time consuming and costly. Although much of the chronology and the time of origin is somewhat vague due to unclear historical records, there is a large possibility that the Sacbe is one of the oldest and longest traditions of the Maya. All sacbeob apparently had ritual or religious significance for pilgrimages. Travel writer and early Mayanist John Lloyd Stephens reported that some local Maya people in Yucatán still said

12932-404: The presence of agriculturalists in the Maya lowlands by c. 3000 BC, although permanent agricultural settlements seem to have developed only gradually. Analysis of bones from early Maya grave sites indicate that, although maize had already become a major component of the diet (under 30% at Ceullo, Belize) by this time, fish, meat from game animals, and other hunted or gathered foods still made up

13054-669: The probable culprits of the Antonine Plague (165–180 AD) to have been smallpox or measles . The disease likely started in China and spread to the West via the Silk Road . Roman troops first contracted the disease in the East before they returned home. Striking a virgin population, the Antonine Plague had dreadful mortality rates; between one third to half of the population, 60 to 70 million people, perished. Roman cities suffered from

13176-418: The rate of innovation declines, as measured by the number of inventions relative to the amount of money spent on research and development , it becomes progressively harder for there to be a technological solution to the problem of societal collapse. What produces modern sedentary life, unlike nomadic hunter-gatherers , is extraordinary modern economic productivity. Tainter argues that exceptional productivity

13298-737: The rise of agriculture in the Old World. As such, they had immune systems that were ill-equipped to handle the diseases to which their counterparts in Eurasia had become resistant. When the Europeans arrived in the Americas, in short order, the indigenous populations of the Americas found themselves facing smallpox, measles , whooping cough , and the bubonic plague, among others. In tropical areas, malaria, yellow fever , dengue fever , river blindness , and others appeared. Most of these tropical diseases were traced to Africa. Smallpox ravaged Mexico in

13420-451: The sacbeob had to take into account the conditions of their specific region to ensure the longevity of the sacbeob. At the site of Cerèn, drainage was required on the sides of the sacbe, as well as regular maintenance by laborers due to the wet conditions in this area. Many theories surrounding the construction of the sacbeob have been posed. Although a general consensus has not been reached, experts believe that sacbeob presence in some areas

13542-475: The sacbeob here are not as straight as previously thought. Furthermore, it seems that settlements continue to follow the path of the sacbe for some time as it leads out of the central portion of the site. This information shows just how influential these causeways were in the lives of local residents. Examination of the Coba-Yaxuna sacbe yielded an especially important find: a five ton stoneroller resting atop

13664-499: The sacbeob in the Yucatán are the best known, they are documented elsewhere in the Maya area. A number of sacbeob have been found around El Mirador and Tikal in the northern Petén Basin and around Copan in the southern Guatemalan Highlands , as well as at other sites. The territory of the Maya at its height was expansive, and included many different types of terrain, climate, and ecological zones. Therefore, those constructing

13786-403: The sacbeob to delineate the end of a sacbe, or the point of crossing for two sacbeob. Ramps, stairs, and other features meant to facilitate the use of sacbeob by pedestrians have been routinely observed, and seem to increase in abundance the closer one gets to prominent architectural features of a site. Sacbeob have been found to be in close association with water sources at many sites, including

13908-442: The site of La Blanca featured a central mound more than seventy-five feet tall and contained a masonry fragment strongly resembling a head in the distinctive Olmec style. Carved stone stele also began to appear during this period, adorned with portraits of rulers but still devoid of writing. Warfare appears to have intensified during this period, as evidenced by advanced weaponry, rulers beginning to be portrayed as warriors, and

14030-764: The site of Ti'ho (modern Mérida, Yucatán ), through such sites as Ake and Izamal , to the Caribbean Sea near modern Puerto Morelos , a total distance of some 300 km . In modern times, some of the ancient sacbeob have been used as bases or incorporated into modern highways and railway lines . In contemporary times, researchers have mapped sacbeob quite extensively in cases where the roads radiate out from cities (ie. Calakmul ). However, sacbeob in between cities are less frequently mapped, since they go through areas of extremely dense jungle. In an effort to map Maya sacbeob more effectively, researchers have more recently turned to radar imaging. This form of mapping has

14152-430: The smaller sites of Yaxuna, almost 100 km to the west, and Ixil, about 20 km to the southwest. Since Coba is the only major Classic Period site in a 5,000 square kilometer area around it, Yaxuna and Ixil are believed to be outposts or subsidiaries of Coba, which would have been the capital of the state in which they all resided. Extensive research at Coba, including the use of imaging technology, has revealed that

14274-502: The spread of vaccine scepticism has been accompanied by the resurrection of long-conquered diseases like measles. This lead the WHO to name the antivaccination movement one of the world's top 10 public-health threats. During the Roman Empire, citizen employment was vastly being replaced by slave labor. Slaves were replacing many of the jobs citizens were doing. Slaves were receiving apprenticeships and education and were even learning to replace

14396-441: The summers of 1314–1316 were some of the wettest on record over a period of 700 years. Historically, the dawn of agriculture led to the rise of contagious diseases. Compared to their hunting-gathering counterparts, agrarian societies tended to be sedentary, have higher population densities, be in frequent contact with livestock, and be more exposed to contaminated water supplies and higher concentrations of garbage. Poor sanitation,

14518-497: The surface of the sacbe. It is believed that this roller was used to compact the surface of the sacbe to ensure a smooth, uniform walking surface. At the Maya site of Cerén , located in El Salvador , studies of preserved plant material have revealed that sacbeob were used to transport goods amongst the agricultural fields in this area. It is also important to note that the sacbeob at Cerèn were used as an evacuation route after

14640-524: The year 1000 BC, the Maya city of Aguada Fénix was built in Tabasco , this archaeological site corresponds to a time of great change for Maya society. Since before its construction, the Mayas were nomads and did not use ceramics. They lived from hunting, fishing, and growing corn. However, from the construction of Aguada Fénix, it is shown that they began to use ceramics and became sedentary. Aguada Fénix marks

14762-410: Was likely ruled by the first true Maya city-state, Kaminaljuyu . Lying within modern-day Guatemala City on the shores of Lake Miraflores, Kaminaljuyu developed a powerful government structure that organized massive irrigation campaigns and built numerous intricately designed stone monuments to its rulers. These monuments clearly depict war captives and often show the rulers holding weapons, indicating

14884-427: Was over a stone and rubble fill. Although great progress has been made on determining the roles of sacbeob in Maya society, the decision to construct sacbeob as opposed to smaller, less complicated paths is puzzling to experts. Without a profound reliance on beasts of burden to transport goods, it remains partially unclear why the Maya decided to expend so much labor constructing these impressive roads. However it remains

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