The scientists contacted Alexandre Tokovinine, an expert in Maya writing at the University of Alabama, who recalled an inscribed stone monument discovered in the nearby city of Naranjo that documented a series of successful military campaigns against neighboring kingdoms. See how laser scans reveal a Maya "megalopolis" below the Guatemalan jungle. (The Maya name of many cities remains unknown.) They also found something quite rare: an inscription clearly stating the name the ancient Maya gave the city: Bahlam Jol. As they gradually uncovered what was left of the buildings, they found that many of them had been intentionally damaged or destroyed, and traces of fire were all around, suggesting the fire may instead have been an intentional one lit by enemy invaders. While Wahl was still trying to make sense of this discovery, a team of archaeologists led by National Geographic Explorer Francisco Estrada-Belli of Tulane University started their first dig of Witzna, a site that was initially discovered in the 1960s, but never explored in depth. Yet for the earlier Classic period in which the charcoal entered the lake-radiocarbon-dated to between 690 and 700 A.D.-there was no evidence of drought. Wahl’s first expectation was that the large fire that likely produced all this charcoal-and the decline in corn pollen seen in deposits formed in the decades and centuries after the fire occurred-might have been due to the Terminal Classic-era droughts the paleoclimatologist was interested in studying. “But in 20 years of sampling lakes, I had never seen a layer this thick.” “Because people often burn forest to clear land, charcoal is quite common in lake sediments in the area,” he explains. Samples taken from lake sediment at the bottom of Laguna Ek’Naab, shown above, contain an unusually thick layer of charcoal that suggests a large, destructive fire occurred in the area between 690 and 700 A.D. Yet the most remarkable thing Wahl found at the bottom of Laguna Ek’Naab was a 1.2-inch-thick layer comprised of large chunks of charcoal. “Due to the steep surrounding landscape, sediment accumulated in this lake at the rate of about 1 cm every year,” he explains, “providing us with high-resolution information of what was going on in the area.” Fast-accumulating sediment indicates that forests were cut and land was cleared, causing increased erosion, while corn pollen found in those sediments leave no doubt about the main crop grown in the area. The lake is situated at the bottom of a steep cliff topped by the ruins of the ancient Maya city archaeologists call Witzna, and Wahl believed the sediment on the bottom of the lake might reveal what happened to the people that once thrived there.Įxplore the Maya ritual cave that’s been ‘untouched’ for 1,000 years, stunning archaeologists. Geological Survey set out to find in 2013 when he first made his way through the dense jungle of northern Guatemala towards a lake known as Laguna Ek’Naab. Unauthorized use is prohibited.Įvidence of drought in what’s known as the Terminal Classic period (800-950 A.D.), and how it may have affected agriculture, was what paleoclimatologist David Wahl of the U.S.
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