[Aztlan] Gibson's Apocalypto Vs. Diamond's Collapse

[newsroom-l at newsroom-l.net]

>
> John Hawks: "Haven't you noticed that Apocalypto is basically a
> novelization of the Maya part of Jared Diamond's Collapse?" (
> http://johnhawks.net/weblog/ and
> http://www.mindfully.org/Heritage/2003/Civilization-Collapse-EndJun03.htm)
>
> "Diamond pushes this simplified version of Maya history as an allegory for
> U.S. ecological hubris."

Jared Diamond's thesis is somewhat flawed by his assertion that the Maya
relied on slash and burn agriculture. The modern Maya do use this
technique, but it's my understanding that the ancient Maya were highly
sophisticated farmers who mainly used irrigation canals and water storage
reservoirs to farm fixed settlements.

You might be interested in an article I wrote for the London Observer
Foreign News Service several years ago about research at the El Eden
Ecological Reserve near Cancun indicating that the Maya might have have
cultivated mats of algae called periphyton for fertilizer.

How were they farming at the time of the Conquest? Slash and burn seems to
be a rather limited method to support the huge populations that are said
to have existed when the Spaniards arrived.