Climate scientists looking at weather patterns from more than 1,000 years ago in Mexico have found that one of America’s ancient civilisations, the Maya people, began to decline after a drought that lasted for more than a century.
The Maya lived in what is now southern Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Belize long before Europeans came to America. They flourished for more than 3,000 years, building many cities and huge pyramid-shaped temples, like the one that still stands at Chichén Itzá in Mexico.
The Maya developed a very sophisticated writing system, and their maths skills were as advanced as anything used in Africa, Asia or Europe at the time. However, around AD800, the most important cities in the south were steadily abandoned. By the year AD950, the once-mighty civilisation had…
