THE ANCIENT MAYA AND THEIR FOREST: A DOMESTICATED LANDSCAPE

Anabel Ford, PhD, University of California at Santa Barbara

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Popular views of the Classic Maya Collapse present a tableau of an environment destroyed by the avarice of the culture itself. Too many demands on the populace, unchecked population growth, overuse of natural resources—this is a convenient view and reflects our own disastrous relationship to our environment, in general, and our treatment of the tropics, in specific. Western views paint the tropics as challenging and difficult. How could the Maya civilization arise and thrive in such a setting? 

 We know that the Maya civilization emerged in the tropical forests of the Maya lowlands to flourish for more than 2,000 years. By the Classic Period (AD 250-900), they were recording important events in carved stone, on decorated pottery vessels, and in painted bark books. The Maya documented regal facets of life—challenges to power, alliances and visits as well as celebratory proceedings.

 Recent work in the Maya forests of El Pilar, Belize, provides new insight into the development of the Maya and how they lived in the woodlands that were their home. Surveys of the landscape, work with traditional farmers, and collaborations with governments to conserve the culture and nature of El Pilar reveal a new integrative approach to the understanding of the ancient Maya and the future of the Maya Forest.

Anabel Ford, PhD, is Director of the MesoAmerican Research Center, University of California at Santa Barbara and President of Exploring Solutions Past. Her focus is on understanding the ancient Maya landscape and has branched into an interdisciplinary research program addressing: How did the Maya interacted with the rain forest? What were their responses to climate change? Where did settlements concentrate? What environmental conditions impacted populations expansions and contractions? She has examined these diverse yet interrelated themes from detailed investigation of geography, architecture, artifacts, and archives. She has tracked the economic and spatial patterns of the Maya of El Pilar, a major center she found and mapped in 1983, that is now a binational protected area in Belize and Guatemala. Of special relevance to our current environmental challenges is Dr. Ford’s work that demonstrates the Maya were able to prosper over millennia with a distinctly local relationship to the tropical environment she calls “the Maya forest garden”, as showcased at El Pilar