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The Origin and Development of Lowland Classic Maya Civilization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

William L. Rathje
William L. Rathje*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Harvard University
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Abstract

The southern Maya lowlands present a largely redundant environment which does not possess the potential for major internal symbiotic regions or for irrigation. In fact, the interior of this region is uniformly deficient in resources essential to the efficiency of every individual household engaged in the Mesoamerican agricultural subsistence economy: mineral salt, obsidian for blades, and hard stone for grinding. Yet, in the core of this rain forest region, the basic elements of Classic Maya civilization first coalesced. A model involving methods of procuring and distributing the resources necessary to the efficiency of an agricultural subsistence economy explains the loci of lowland Classic Maya development and the order in which these loci developed. This model can also be applied to the Olmec civilization.

Type
Articles
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , July 1971 , pp. 275 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1971

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