A reassessment of the impact of drought cycles on the Classic Maya

The study reported here challenges the widely discussed hypothesis that cyclical droughts had a major impact on the Classic Maya. This hypothesis was developed by Hodell et al. (2001, 2005) on the basis of the results of time series analyses of cores from Lake Chichancanab in the Yucatan peninsula. Hodell et al.'s analyses indicated that the Maya region was affected by two drought cycles during the 1st millennium CE, one with a periodicity of...