permaculture

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network <lakinroe@silcom.com>]

NEW BOOK/The Maya Forest Garden: Eight Millennia of Sustainable Cultivation 
of the Tropical Woodlands, Left Coast Press, June 2015.Ford, Anabel and Nigh, 
Ronald,
Classic ancient Maya “collapse” not caused by overpopulation and 
deforestation, say researcher

http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/summer-2015/article/classic-ancient-maya-collapse-not-caused-by-overpopulation-and-deforestation-say-researchers
The Maya practiced sustainable agriculture that supported dense populations 
well beyond the Classic period.
Classic ancient Maya “collapse” not caused by overpopulation and 
deforestation, say researchers
For years, archaeologist Anabel Ford has been arguing the case that the 
ancient Maya knew well how to manage their tropical forest environment to 
their advantage, eventually sustaining large populations even beyond the time 
when many archaeologists suggest the Maya declined and abandoned their iconic 
Classic period pyramidal and temple constructions and monumental inscriptions 
during the 8th and 9th centuries CE. She challenges the popular theories long 
held by many scholars that the Maya declined because of overpopulation and 
deforestation from increased agricultural production, perhaps aggravated by 
draught and climate change.
“In the past there was no extensive deforestation,” states Ford.*
At the base of her reasoning stands years of research related to the ancient 
practice of the Maya in cultivating ‘forest gardens’, a method of sustainable 
agroforestry that employs an agricultural methodology called the Milpa 
Cycle—the creation of a polycultivated, tree-dominated, biodiverse landscape 
by dispersed smallholder farmers, employing natural cycles and maximizing the 
utility of the native flora and fauna. Having its roots even before the rise 
of the Preclassic Maya, it worked by sequencing an area from a closed canopy 
forest to an open field. When cleared, it was dominated by annual crops that 
transformed into a managed orchard garden, and then back to a closed canopy 
forest in a continuous circuit. “Contrary to European agricultural systems 
developed around the same period, these fields were never abandoned, even 
when they were forested,” says Ford. “Thus, it was a rotation of annuals with 
succeeding stages of forest perennials during which all phases received 
careful human management.”
She explains the process and its implications in detail in her new book, The 
Maya Forest Garden: Eight Millennia of Sustainable Cultivation of the 
Tropical Woodlands, co-authored with Ronald Nigh, a professor at the Centro 
Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) in 
Chiapas, Mexico. The book summarizes years of research evaluating 
archaeological, paleoenvironmental, agricultural, botanical, ecological and 
ethnographic and historical data from Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize, 
including a focus on the large Maya center of El Pilar.
“Ecological, agricultural, and botanical research on the Maya forest 
demonstrates that it is in fact a variegated garden dominated by plants of 
economic value, and thus highly dependent on human interaction,” says Ford. 
Thus, “the co-creation of the Maya and their forest environment was based on 
a strategy of resource management that resulted in a landscape called the 
Maya “forest garden.”
elpilarmilpadiversityA Maya forest garden. Courtesy BRASS/El Pilar
elpilarmilpacycleThe Milpa Cycle, from maize field to perennials and back to 
the forest. Courtesy BRASS/El Pilar
Moreover, Ford points to the Milpa Cycle as being responsible for producing 
much of the visible fabric of the ancient Maya jungle ‘backdrop’, including 
the Maya landscape of today—a forest that is in a real sense itself a 
creation and ‘monument’ of the Maya people. “The Maya forest, once thought to 
be a wild, pristine jungle, is, in reality, the result of prehistoric, 
colonial, and recent human activities,” write Ford and Nigh in their book.*
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Exploring Solutons Past: The Maya Forest Alliance
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In other words, by managing and shaping the forest landscape elements through 
the Milpa Cycle into a human-sculpted environment beneficial in terms of the 
food, shelter, medicinal and other material needs for sustaining 
ever-increasing populations, the Maya became the actual creators of their 
tropical environment—in essence, the architects of the jungle itself. Most 
significantly, because of its sustainable, renewing techniques, the Milpa 
Cycle became a key to the longevity of the Maya civilization long after the 
Classic period ‘collapse’. Ford and Nigh conclude: “When political crises 
struck Classic Maya society, the population largely retired to the forest 
garden, leaving elite centers abandoned.”*
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The book, The Maya Forest Garden: Eight Millennia of Sustainable Cultivation 
of the Tropical Woodlands, is published by Left Coast Press and can be 
purchased at the Left Coast Press website.
*Ford, Anabel and Nigh, Ronald, The Maya Forest Garden: Eight Millennia of 
Sustainable Cultivation of the Tropical Woodlands, Left Coast Press, June 
2015.