Jared Diamond Collapse Societies

From the calendars we still use today, to the way we grow crops with farming, ancient civilizations such as the Mayas, the Aztecs, and the Incas influenced and created the way we contribute our skills towards the public. These people’s expertise proves just how they improved the world. The civilizations were advanced for their time based on their early society, their accomplishments, and the remains that are still remembered, as well as viewed to this day. One of the ways that the Mayas, the Aztecs, and the Incas were successful was through their people’s actions in a community.

Maya is important because it’s surrounded and supported by a large population of farmers. They were thought to serve as mediators between the gods and people on earth. They also performed the elaborate religious ceremonies and rituals so important to the Mayan culture. The Maya is a mesoamerican civilization, noted for Maya script, the only known fully developed writing system of the pre-Columbian Americas as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. The Maya

One thing about this book that I did not like was how the author did not explain some

Since the Collapse of the once strong Classic Maya civilization, archeologists have tried to unearth and understand what caused such a big society to perish. There are many theories to why the Classic Maya had their falling, but the one that will be focused on this research will be the collapse due to lack of sufficient rainfall causing prolonged periods of drought. According to Joseph A. Tainter in the Annual Review of Anthropology, a collapse is defined as “…a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economical/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time. ”(Tainter, 2006)

He introduces a few topics properly but goes on and on about them, which also make this book a slow,

He has done much research and his book is to enlighten people on the misbeliefs in some very important matters throughout history, specifically

The Empire lasted for around 3,500 years. (Page 93.) During it’s reign, the Mayan empire achieved many accomplishments. A couple of these accomplishments were the Sacred Round, a calendar like tool that gave meaning to the days, and the farming technique “Slash and Burn”, that prepared the land to grow the food needed for the society. (Page 95.)

In the book it mentions that the Maya knew not to go against the Spanish Masters because their military was much stronger than the Mayan warriors. There were very much loss with the Mayan Empire because of the conquest itself. Moreover the Mayans were captured as slaves and sold by the Spaniards for trade and economic purposes. As the Mayan Empire fell there were other tribal groups that would want to seek alliance with the Spaniards.

The Mayans were people with no central government, and yet individuals worked hard to complete buildings for the whole community. The citizens of Mayan cities followed orders from higher political powers, which organized the work and maintenance of these places. (Doc B) The effort put into building these cities must have been unimaginable. The Mayans worked hard to construct many places without the luxury of having a previously established government and system to command over the people.

The Mayan civilization was a Mesoamerican civilization developed by the Mayan peoples, which stood out in America1 for its hieroglyphic writing, one of the few fully developed writing systems of the pre-Columbian American continent, as well as for its art, architecture and systems of mathematics, astronomy and ecology.2 It was developed in the region that encompasses the southeast of Mexico, corresponding to the states of Yucatan, Campeche, Tabasco, Quintana Roo and eastern Chiapas, as well as in most of Guatemala, Belize, the western part of Honduras and El Salvador. This region is composed of the northern lowlands that encompass the Yucatan peninsula, the highlands of the Sierra Madre that extends through the Mexican state of Chiapas, southern

The incas technology was The quipu,it was a crafted tool that was used as a communication system in the Incan civilization. They used the sun temples to study the positions of the sun, the moon, and the planet Venus. The sun temples were a scientific advance in the Incan civilization. The Mayans One by one, the cities in the southern lowlands were abandoned, Maya civilization was that region had collapsed. The reason for this mysterious.

Lastly, the mayans had no birden animals to help them. In summary, the mayans have many more differences from our modern day beliefs.

Religion is going to be about what they believed in and what gods and how they lived. Economy is about what were their main crops, what meat or fish did they eat. And Technology was what they made or came up how to use it. The Mayans religion was similar to the Aztec and the Inca.

They grew their crops using slash and burn farming. This means they cut down trees and burned them and then grew their crops where the trees were. The Mayans were very good at cutting and building stone. They made their city states out of stone buildings. The Mayans believed in many gods and built stone temples.

According to www.conserve-energy-future.com, the first factor causing environmental degradation is overpopulation. Rinkesh, World’s Top Eco-Conscious Bloggers and website owner, stated that overpopulation leads to excessive consumption of goods and necessities which impacts natural resources. This is because more people demand more food, clothes, shelter and fuel. Because of this demand, their living space needs to be expanded in order to grow food and provide homes for people.