Look at this picture and make up as many questions as you can. Typical questions that students ask are: Who lived here? What was this building used for? What material was it made from? How did people get the material? Who built it? Why was it built? If people lived in it, how did they get their food?

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These are the exact same questions that Social Scientists ask when they come across the remnants of any civilization. How do they get their answers? Often there are no records telling us about what happened, because records were never written, or no one living today can understand the language that they were written in, or all of the records were destroyed. Sometimes, some stories of the past were passed down over generations telling us about what happened. These stories are called oral history. However, often there are events that these stories do not talk about and we may have questions that these stories do not answer.

This is the situation that you have now found yourself in. You are an Anthropologist and you have been invited to visit the site of an ancient Mayan village. Other Social Scientists working at the site found the remains of a village that stretched across two sides of a river. Over the last few years, these Social Scientists rebuilt three parts of the village based on what they think it would have looked like. Look at the picture of the area drawn from the vantage point of a plane. Are there other hidden parts of the village that have not been uncovered yet?

Picture # 2 shows all of the buildings that have been discovered in the area. There were also narrow strips underneath the forest that contained fish bones and other remnants of water-life including water plants. No remains of wheels or other parts of land vehicles were found anywhere. The Social Scientists wondered how people traveled around in the large city and how they transported things from place to place. Since there were no records of this city, the Scientists had to guess that the narrow strips containing the remains of water-life might have been canals used for canoes. Based on the guesses that the Scientists made, an artist drew picture #2 to show what this large city might have looked a thousand years ago.

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picture #1

As the Social Scientists dug deep in the ground, they found areas of the ground that had high concentrations of corn pollen. Later they found other areas that had concentrations of pollen of other edible plants such as areas where pepper pollen was found and others where tomato pollen was found. What guess did they make about why certain areas as large as city blocks contained concentrations of certain kinds of pollen?

X= corn pollen

Y= pepper pollen

Z= tomato pollen

After the Scientists guessed that these areas were garden plots used for growing crops, they wondered how the few gardens close to the city could provide enough food for all of the people who lived there. This made them travel very far from the city to see if there could have been farms in the distance. It was not a surprise to them that they found evidence of farms very far from the city, since such an urban centre required a great deal of food. However, what was surprising was that the further from the city they went, the closer to the surface was the evidence of farm fields. What guess did the Scientists make about why evidence of far away farms were closer to the surface of the ground?

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X

Y

ZX

picture #2

Finding Evidence and ArtefactsThe closer the evidence is to the top of the surface, the less old is that evidence. Scientists believe that evidence and artefacts that are found deeper in the ground are much older than those on top. Over the years, artefacts get covered up and buried by vegetation that turn to soil.

Evidence of Large BurnsThe Scientists found something else that was very interesting. Wherever large concentrations of edible plant pollen were found, there was also evidence of a large amount of burnt trees. Areas where no pollen was found had no ash or charcoal.

Far from the archaeological site, the Scientists found places of the jungle that were purposely set on fire even today.

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What is Slash and Burn Agriculture?Do some research on slash and burn agriculture and find out some of the problems of soil erosion that is associated with it.

Layers of evidence under the soilAs the Scientists dug deeper in between the buildings of the large city, they found evidence of small villages that were similar to the original village that they found much closer to the top of the soil.

SmallVillage(1200 AD)

The diagram above shows the approximate dates of the different layers where the city and the villages were found.

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Large City(900 AD)

Very old villages(200 BC)

Top of the ground(2008 AD)

Below is an artist’s drawing of what the very old village would have looked like. How is this picture different from the picture #1 of the small village dated at 1200 AD ?

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picture #3

The pictures have been placed out of order. Put all of the pictures in chronological order.

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picture #4

picture #5

What happened to this civilization? Many Scientists believe that slash and burn agriculture led to the demise of this civilization. Can you write an account of how this civilization collapsed?

There are other theories of how this Civilization came to an end. Below are some murals found in the ruins of another large city very far away from this one. How do these paintings give you another set of clues that might help you explain what happened?

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Detail below

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Collapse of Copan

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An interactive site explores the real collapse of a Maya empire. This could be used to further explore Collapse due to the decimation of resources. http://www.learner.org/interactives/collapse/copan/index.php

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