The Classic Maya collapse
Southern lowland cities are abandoned over a century and a half.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 150 years
- Known to
- ± 30 years
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
Between roughly 800 and 950 CE the great southern Maya centres stop erecting monuments, and their populations disperse. Palaeoclimate records from lake sediments and speleothems show a series of severe multi-decade droughts in this window. Combined with intensified warfare, soil exhaustion and the demands of elite competition, the drought is the leading explanation. Maya civilisation did not end — the northern cities and millions of Maya people continued.