The Classic Maya Collapse: A Review of Evidence and Interpretations Page: 2
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2
the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to western Honduras. Enumeration
and explanation of Classic Maya successes would require volumes,
and many such -exist. Far fewer are those works addressed di-..
rectly to their greatest failure--the failure to continue to
flourish as a civilization--which led to their subsequent
reversion to a culture less organized and materially inferior
to their former way of life. For unknown reasons, in the
decades prior to 900 A.D. the Maya cultural centers were
abandoned, never again to regain the heights of civilization
reached by their ancestors.
The fall of the Maya city-states ushered in a Dark Age.
The core area of the Classic Maya was largely abandoned: the
great cities died. Along the margins of the old Maya World,
occasional flashes of brilliance illuminated 600 years of
mediocrity. The death of the great cities killed also the
memory of them. Whether Maya books in 1500 held stories of
glorious lost kingdoms or did not was rendered unknowable
when the Spaniards burned the books. The Maya Dark Age was
not enlightened in the Spanish Period by the keeping of records.
The losses from depopulation and the success of hispanization
in depriving the Indian of the memory of the pagan past did
far, more to kill Indian culture than the Christ-eyed records
of the Europeans did to preserve its memory.1
1. Michael D. Coe, The Maya (New York: Praeger Publishers,
1966) , pp. 17-73.
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Wood, Jeffrey Clark. The Classic Maya Collapse: A Review of Evidence and Interpretations, thesis, December 1977; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc504349/m1/6/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .