New research from the Field Museum and UIC suggests that a decline in the availability of obsidian may have been instrumental in precipitating the decline in the high civilization of the Maya:
“Our research strongly suggests that changing patterns of trade were instrumental in prompting the ‘Maya collapse,'” said Gary Feinman, curator of anthropology at The Field Museum, which collaborated with the University of Illinois at Chicago on the study.
The new research casts doubt on the idea that climate change was the sole or principal cause, Feinman said, noting that some Maya centers, which flourished after the collapse, were located in the driest parts of the Maya region. Feinman said that climate change, along with breakdowns in leadership, warfare, and other factors, contributed to the collapse, but the shifting exchange networks may have been a key factor.
For the Maya, who did not have metal tools, obsidian (or volcanic glass) was highly valued because of its sharp edges for use as cutting instruments. Maya lords and other elites derived power from controlling access to obsidian, which could be traded for important goods or sent as gifts to foster important relationships with other Mayan leaders.
The Field Museum researchers found that prior to the fall of the Maya inland centers, obsidian tended to flow along inland riverine networks. But over time, this material began to be transported through coastal trade networks instead, with a corresponding increase in coastal centers’ prominence as inland centers declined.
This is a topic I’ve returned to from time to time. This same set of circumstances arose in the Middle East. 10,000 years ago there was an extensive obsidian trade throughout the region. As nearby obsidian stocks were depleted trade extended over an increasing area. Eventually, good quality obsidian became hard enough to come by that substitutes were used.
Unfortunately for the Maya there wasn’t much in the way of copper deposits available to them for substitutes as there were in the Middle East.
It should be a warning to our modern-day cornucopians (Ray Kurzweil) that resource contraints can end civilizations, much as they (he) deny such a thing is possible.
I’m just reading David Abulafia’s The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean. He discusses the beginnings of trade in the eastern Med. based on obsidian and how, as a strategic resource, it encouraged westward expansion of the sea.
Luckily for civilization, copper was just coming into trade as the obsidian sources were being depleted, particularly at Melos.
Interesting read so far…
I’m not sure how much luck was involved. As I posted last week the oldest insular agricultural settlement in the Mediterranean has been found on Cyprus. There’s some question over whether the word for copper is derived from the island’s name or the island’s name is derived from the Sumerian word for copper (zubar).
Active production of copper on Cyprus goes back to the fourth millennium BCE and may go back farther. My point is that, depending on the timeline, active trade in copper over quite some distance may go back as much as 10,000 years, concurrent with the development of agricultural settlements on Cyprus and before the point at which the Chalcolithic is usually dated. Basically, I think the causality may go the other way around.