http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_world_history/toc/jwh11.1.html
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Third Worldism or Globalism? Reply to James M. Blaut's Review of The Myth of
Continents .
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Subjects:
Blaut, James M. (James Morris)
Lewis, Martin W. Myth of continents: a critique of metageography.
Geographical perception.
Blaut, James M. (James Morris)
On Myths and Maps: A Rejoinder to Lewis and Wigen.
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Subjects:
Lewis, Martin W. Third worldism or globalism?
Wigen, K�ren, 1958-
Geographical perception.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Proyect" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, May 25, 2001 7:26 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:12183] reply to J. Donald Hughes
> I posted this to PEN-L on May 27, 1999
>
> -----
>
> [Just as I suspected, J. Donald Hughes's CNS article "The Classic Maya
> Collapse" was based on dated scholarship. Actually, Hughes's article turns
> out to be impressions of his vacation in Mexico, not much more substantial
> than my "London Calling" post. More recent scholarship has refuted this
> notion of wasteful use of soil and other resources, especially that
> presented by Robert J. Sharer in the 892 page "The Ancient Maya", which I
> recommend to anybody interested in the topic. Sharer is Professor of
> Anthropology, and Curator of the American Section of the University Museum
> and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. He reads Mayan
> hieroglyphics and began work on the 5th edition of "The Ancient Maya" in
> 1980, which was finally released in 1994 after 15 years of research.]
>
> A variety of ecological disasters has been proposed to explain the Maya
> demise. The earliest pointed to the harmful consequences of swidden
> agriculture, which is believed to have been the basis of lowland
> subsistence at one time. Its arguably destructive long-term effects on
soil
> fertility and in turn the gradual conversion of forested areas into
savanna
> grasslands have been used to explain the failure of Classic Maya
> civilization. Since the Maya had no tools with which to cultivate the
> grasslands, so this argument goes, farmers would eventually have been
> forced to abandon the central lowlands. Other supposed effects of swidden
> cultivation in combination with the heavy tropical rainfall of the
lowlands
> were severe erosion and the deposition of soil into what would formerly
> have been shallow lakes, yielding the swampy depressions (bajos) found in
> many areas of the lowlands today. The question whether or not all these
> depressions were originally shallow lakes, at least within the span of
Maya
> civilization, is yet to be resolved. In any event, the ecological-disaster
> theories based on swidden cultivation can no longer be supported, given
the
> recent evidence that the agriculture practiced by the ancient Maya was
both
> diversified and intensive...
>
> The intensive agricultural methods known or suspected to have been used by
> the ancient Maya include continuous field cultivation, household gardens,
> arboculture, and hydraulic modifications.
>
> In continuous field cultivation, crops are grown with fallow periods of
> sufficiently short duration that the fields do not become overgrown, a
> method that requires constant labor to weed out the competitors of the
food
> crops. At least in areas with well-drained, fertile soils and plentiful
> rainfall, the ancient Maya could have practiced this method of
cultivation.
> Prime candidates for this method would have been alluvial valleys, like
> those found in various parts of the southern and coastal lowlands. There,
> on the natural river levees and on the older terraces (of former
riverbeds)
> found above the localized or extensive floodplains of such rivers as the
> Usumacinta, the Motagua, the Belize, and their tributaries, continuous
> field cultivation would have been very productive; periodic flooding in
> these areas would replenished soil fertility by depositing new alluvial
> soils. The lowest portions of active floodplains (backswamps) are often
too
> wet for too much of the year to allow cultivation without hydraulic
> modifications (see below). Where older alluvial soils were no longer being
> replenished by flood deposits, their nutrient depletion could have been
> controlled by proper intercropping...
>
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
>
