Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Mathematicians have uncovered an unexpected mystery of the disappearance of the Mayan civilization – RIA Novosti

24.08.2016

(updated: )

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MOSCOW, August 24 – RIA Novosti. One of the main reasons for the disappearance of Mayan cities may serve as a reservoir and canal system, which helped the Indians to survive the short drought and aggravated the situation during prolonged water shortage periods, say the authors of an article published in the journal Water Resources Research.

” water affects the life of society, and society also affects the water. the availability of water and its reserves determine how much food can be produced, which in turn, affects the growth of the population. on the other hand, population growth can affect and change the natural water cycle by, for example, the construction of tanks and reservoirs, “- says Linda Kouilou (Linda Kuil) from the Technical University of Vienna (Austria).

Civilization Mayan existed several millennia, leaving behind a lot of “dead city” and cultural monuments in the Yucatan Peninsula, suddenly disappeared from the face of the Earth around the ninth century BC, when the majority of the Maya city-states were abandoned by their inhabitants. The reasons for this collapse of civilization are still the subject of debate among scientists.

One of the possible reasons for the collapse of this civilization as it is today considered a number of archaeologists, could be a drought caused by climate change, over-population and the Mayan cities. Serious confirmation of this theory were found in 2012 during excavations on the territory of Tikal, one of the largest Indian cities, where scientists have discovered a complex system of canals and reservoirs, indicating the importance of water in the life of its inhabitants.

Kouilou and her colleagues tested whether the lack of water was really one of the key factors in the disappearance of the Mayan culture, creating a computer model of a typical Mayan “metropolis” on the type of Tikal, which lived from 80 to 100 thousand people.

This model, according to the scientists, consisted of several interconnected models, each of which is to calculate the individual aspects of the city life – as the presence of tanks and the water level in it affects the probability of settlement of survival after the drought, as the increase in the number of its people disrupted the stocks of food and water, and many other things.

As it turned out, the system of reservoirs and tanks, such Tikalskoy really defended Mayan city of short droughts, but they “work” only if the water in them it was abundantly. Otherwise, even a slight lack of water led to the eventual destruction of the city.

On the other hand, the reservoir were not saving method and cause of death of the Mayan cities during a prolonged drought due to a combination of different factors. In particular, the reservoir “hide” deficits in the volume of available water, so the population continues to grow uncontrollably after step over the line, where it remains viable. In addition, the reservoir allowed the Indians to preserve their way of life and begin to save water, which exacerbates the problem, when it ended.

As a result, in those moments when it’s a whole string of major droughts, such cities will lose a lot more people than the village, where the reservoir is not in principle. This explains why all the major Mayan cities were abandoned in the ninth century, when the climate changes have created a series of droughts, and smaller Native villages to the north of the Yucatan survived.

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