Word: mayas
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...inevitable consequence of overpopulation and a disintegrating agricultural system would be malnutrition -- and in fact, some researchers are beginning to find preliminary evidence of undernourishment in children's skeletons from the late Classic period. Given all the stresses on Maya society, says Culbert, what ultimately sent it over the edge "could have been < something totally trivial -- two bad hurricane seasons, say, or a crazy king. An enormously strained system like this could have been pushed over in a million ways...
What sorts of lessons can be drawn from the Maya collapse? Most experts point to the environmental messages. "The Maya were overpopulated and they overexploited their environment and millions of them died," says Culbert bluntly. "That knowledge isn't going to solve the modern world situation, but it's silly to ignore it and say it has nothing to do with us." National Geographic archaeologist George Stuart agrees. The most important message, he says, is "not to cut down the rain forest." But others are not so sure. Says Stephen Houston, a hieroglyphics expert from Vanderbilt University: "I think...
Just how different the Maya were is clear from their everyday lives, on which archaeologists are increasingly focusing. From the contents of graves and burial caches, the architecture of ordinary houses, and scenes painted on pottery, Demarest and others are learning what an average Maya day was like...
...typical Maya family (averaging five to seven members, archaeologists guess) probably arose before dawn to a breakfast of hot chocolate -- or, if they weren't rich enough, a thick, hot corn drink called atole -- and tortillas or tamales. The house was usually a one-room hut built of interwoven poles covered with dried mud. Meals of corn, squash and beans, supplemented with the occasional turkey or rabbit, were probably eaten...
...Maya also had a highly developed -- and to modern eyes, highly bizarre -- aesthetic sense. "Slightly crossed eyes were held in great esteem," writes Yale anthropologist Michael Coe in his book The Maya. "Parents attempted to induce the condition by hanging small beads over the noses of their children." The Maya also seemed to go in for shaping their children's skulls: they liked to flatten them (although this may have simply been the inadvertent result of strapping babies to cradle boards) or squeeze them into a cone. Some Mayanists speculate that the conehead effect was the result of trying...