Man and Climate in the Maya Lowlands

Abstract

A 15-m sedimentary core from Lake Salpeten provides the first complete Holocene sequence for the lowlying Peten District, Guatemala. Today, Lake Salpeten is a brackish, calcium sulfate lake near saturation surrounded by tropical semievergreen forest. The basal pollen record depicts sparse juniper scrub surrounding a lake basin that held ephermal pools and halophytic marshes. The lake rapidly deepened to > 27 m in the early Holocene and may have been meromictic, because nearly 2 m of gypsum “mush” was deposited. Mesic forests were quickly established and persisted until the Maya entered the district 3000 yr ago and caused extensive deforestation. Any climatic information contained in the pollen record of the Maya period is thus masked, but a regional pollen sequence linked to the archaeological record is substantiated because environmental disturbance was pervasive. Local intensification of occupation and population growth are seen as an increased deposition of pollen of agricultural weeds and colluviation into the lake, while the Classic Maya collapse is marked by a temporary decline in Compositae pollen. Effects of perturbations induced by the Maya persist in the pollen and limnetic record 400 yr after the Spanish conquest.