Just a quick one – I found this other article by Turner andSabloff (2012) who have developed ideas of trade and also argue that changes to trade routes was a key cause in
the Maya collapse.
They go further than Golitko et
al (in the last post) and say that the shift to coastal trade was as
important, if not more so, than any environmental change. Although they accept
that other factors were important, they point out that there must have been
more at play than just drought/invasion. They ask why the Mayans didn’t return to their original
settlements once the climate had returned to ‘normal’ conditions that they were well
adapted to.
This highlights the point that no single factor can cause
collapse/abandonment (disproving Environmental Determinism) and that the collapse of trade networks is a valid argument for collapse.
Source: Acting Man
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