Paleoclimatic Variation in the Valley of Guatemala during Precolumbian Times

The Objectives of the Paleoclimate Project

There were two basic reasons for our interest in investigating the paleoclimate of the Valley of Guatemala. One of these was based on the fact that archaeological excavations at Kaminaljuyú during the 1980s and 1990s (Popenoe de Hatch, 1997; 1999; Barrientos, 1998) had revealed the presence of two irrigation canals which supported a system of hydraulic agriculture that began around 600 B.C. or earlier (Figure 1). The canals drained from a post-Pleistocene lake, termed Lake Miraflores that dried up around 200 A.D., at which time the canals fell into disuse. The lake apparently had formed in a fault-caused depression which collected water from rainfall and local springs. The objective of the Paleoclimate Project was to determine to what degree the desiccation of the lake was due to climatic change, or to human over-exploitation of the water, or both factors.

A second objective of the Project was to determine to what degree the paleoclimate of highland Guatemala correlates with the patterns from the Mesoamerican lowlands (México, Yucatán and the Caribbean), information which had been previously obtained and analyzed by Drs. Brenner and Curtis (see, for example, Brenner, 1994; Curtis et al., 1996; 1998). The methodology requires obtaining cores from lake sediments and, based on the presence of microfossils and pollen associated with radiocarbon dating, changes in climatic patterns can be observed. Lake Amatitlán just southwest of the valley of Guatemala was chosen as the best place to obtain cores. Although the lake had been investigated for climatic inferences by E. Deevey and M. Tzukada (1967), it was considered that additional cores could supplement the information and provide a more comprehensive sequence of dates.

The investigations of the paleoclimate of the Valley of Guatemala were carried out during the month of March, 2000.  Drs. Mark Brenner and Jason Curtis arrived from the University of Florida, Gainesville, on March 5.  The two investigators with the project in Guatemala were Dr. Marion Popenoe de Hatch and Licenciado Erick Ponciano.

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