An e-mail interview with George Bey

— -- George Bey, archaeologist at Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss., writes Dan Vergano about the complex story of the Maya collapse, how the movie Apocalypto missed essential historical points, and the surprising work that is archaeology:

1. Archaeologists have known for years that there were substantial settlements in the northern lowlands during the Classic period (e.g., Chichen Itza). What do you see as the most compelling evidence from your work that there was substantial or complex Maya society in the northern lowlands in the pre-classic era?

The most compelling evidence from my work and the recent work of my colleagues is that we are finding Middle Preclassic sites throughout the entire northern Maya lowlands, including the Puuc region. It is both the number of sites we are finding as well as that some of them produced large-scale monumental architecture (pyramids and acropolis), while others have ball courts. In the case of Kiuic, what is important is that the Middle Preclassic occupation serves as the basis upon which the Classic period site developed. So, not only do we have many Middle Preclassic sites of various sizes and complexity, but we also know now that Classic Maya civilization in the north evolves directly from this Middle Preclassic complexity.

2. The public mostly knows of the Maya from the 'Classic' collapse in the southern lowlands. How do you think your work changes the general picture of their society? Was the southern collapse less of a catastrophe than the Apocalypto portrait of things, and more of a local event?

The public needs to understand that the so-called Maya collapse was not an overnight affair that resulted in the total disappearance of the Maya people. The collapse took place over a period of more than 200 years. Although the collapse was eventually widespread with cities from present-day Honduras through Guatemala, Belize and Mexico all being abandoned, the causes were clearly different from region to region and took place at different times in each region. In some cases warfare or and changing economic conditions played a role, in others it was overpopulation and exploitation of the environment, in others it may have been drought, The result was the breakdown of elite culture and the abandonment of their cities, however, millions of Maya continued to live in Mesoamerica, especially in the northern Maya lowland, as they do so today. Perhaps the important question we need to ask about the collapse was not the variables that caused it, but why the Maya were unable to answer the challenges they were faced with. What made them unable to solve the problems they faced as a culture so that the great cities were abandoned and much of the high culture they had created was lost? Or, maybe that was the way the Maya solved the problem, by this I mean, maybe the Maya people did survive by abandoning these massive cities and their elite culture which must have been a major drain on the resources of the overall Maya culture.

My work in the Puuc region is changing our understanding of the rise and fall of civilization in this part of the Maya world. The rise of the great cities of the Puuc were thought to be a result of migration from the south as it collapsed. Our work indicates that instead the Puuc region was occupied for almost 2000 years before the collapse in the south and that to understand the rise of the Maya in this region you must look at the Preclassic and Early classic centers of the Puuc not the southern collapse. As we re-write the history of the rise of Maya civilization in the north, it also means we will have to re-write the history of its collapse. Our understanding of the northern collapse, which postdates that of the south, is still poorly understood from an archaeological perspective. One of the projects we are doing, directed by a graduate student from Tulane University, named Rebecca Hill, is to examine what we believe is a "post-monumental complex of structures at Kiuic's neighboring site — Huntichmul. By looking at the simple constructions that were the last to be built by the Maya in the Puuc, we hope to learn about the processes that led to the abandonment of this region.