Mayan city died out after inadvertently poisoning its own water supply. Anybody from Texas would have known this was likely.
As drought ravaged the land, the people of Tikal were dependent on their dwindling water reservoirs, which archaeologists now discover were fatally polluted.
The Mayan civilization in southern Mexico and northern Central America began to take form around 4,000 years ago, and was marked by the first stabs at settlement and farming in the area. Though this was not an organized collective or alliance that called itself “Mayan” but an umbrella term for the peoples of the region, we can still say that in its “classic” phase – from about the year 300 to 1000 – the Mayan civilization would create great urban centers and even city-states, featuring monumental architecture, art, and hieroglyphic writing going back as much as 2,400 years.
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