Charles Hugh Smith – The point is the good times of seemingly endless expansion are never permanent yet human regimes become accustomed to managing only expansion.

Correspondent David L. recently posed a topic I have often pondered: “I am curious how the Mayan empire collapsed.” While there may a definitive answer out there, I have yet to come across it.

From my reading on the subject, it seems likely that there may not be a definitive answer due to the paucity of written records (most of whatever remained in the 1500s were destroyed by the Spanish as infidel texts; only three pre-Columbian books / codices of Maya hieroglyphics and fragments of a fourth are known to have survived) and archeological evidence. Continue reading →