For centuries, the mystery of the Maya civilization’s rise and
fall has captivated explorers and scholars. In one of the first
accounts of the region, the American explorer John Lloyd
Stephens wrote: “Here were the remains of a cultivated,
polished, and peculiar people, who had passed through all the
stages incident to the rise and fall of nations; reached their
golden age, and perished, entirely unknown.” “To us,” he
continued in an 1841 travel journal, “it was all a mystery.”
Now, with the help of modern science, part of that mystery is
being put to rest. A new analysis of 2,000-year-old stalagmites
suggests the role that climate change played in both the Maya
civilization’s achievements and in its undoing. “How do you get
so many different centers that are so successful?” said Douglas
J. Kennett, a geoarchaeologist at Penn State University and co-
author of a new paper in the journal Science, referring to the
range of Maya sites. “We think climate played a role in that
development, and we also think climate