The Mayan society of Central America (2000 B.C. – A.D. 1500), like other ancient states, was characterized by populations unprecedented both in their size and density. It was not just the number of people that lived in the Mayan city-states but also the relatively small area into which they were concentrated. To support such populations, societies developed various intensive agricultural methods, including large-scale irrigation and hill-slope terracing (the cutting of horizontal ridges into hillsides so they can be farmed). These were designed both to increase yields from a given area and to increase the absolute amount of land under cultivation. These strategies were in essence very successful: hey made it possible to feed larger populations than ever before and supported the growth of cities. But they also placed considerable strains on the environment and rendered it increasingly fragile and vulnerable to unexpected climatic events, and even to short-term fluctuations. Thus, the argument is that because of their size and ever more intensive agriculture, the Mayan and other ancient state societies were fundamentally unsustainable. Claims about environmental degradation and disaster have figured prominently in discussions of the collapse of the Mayan city-states of the Central American lowlands. When two explorers came upon the Mayan cities in the 1830s, they were struck by the sight of tall pyramids and elaborately carved stones among luxuriant forest growth. Here was the archetypal picture of a great lost civilization: abandoned cities submerged in vegetation. Theories of catastrophic collapse or apocalyptic overthrow came naturally to mind to explain these dramatic scenes. Recent studies of the Mayan collapse (beginning around A.D. 900) have emphasized the gradual and progressive nature of the process, beginning in earnest in the South and advancing northward. It was not a single, sudden event, as had once been thought. Warfare and social unrest are thought to have played a part, but these may well have arisen through pressure from other causes. The Mayan cities had, after all, flourished for over 500 years and had frequently been at war with each other. But what about the possibility of food shortages? These could have come about through either natural or humanly induced changes in the environment. Increasingly fierce competition between Mayan cities led to an upsurge of monument construction during the eighth and ninth centuries A.D., which would have placed added strain on agricultural production and expansion. Interstate rivalry may hence have pushed the Maya toward overexploitation of their fragile ecosystem. Deforestation and soil erosion might ultimately have destroyed the capacity of the land to support the high population levels of the Mayan cities, leading to famine, social unrest, and the collapse of the major Mayan centers. Yet it may be incorrect to lay the blame entirely on human action. Several of the lowland cities, such as Tikal, appear to have depended heavily on the cultivation of raised fields set in the marshy depressions known as bajos, which today flood intermittently in the rainy season but may originally have been permanent lakes. The raised-field system of intensive cultivation (created by digging surrounding canals and using the soil removed to elevate the fields for planting) allows year-round food production through the constant supply of soil nutrients that erode into the drainage ditches dug around the raised fields, nutrients that are then collected and replaced. Stable water levels were essential to this subsistence system, but evidence from Lake Chichancanab in Yucatán shows that between A.D. 800 and A.D. 1000 this region suffered its driest period of climate in several thousand years. We may expect that as a result water levels fell, and the raised fields in many areas became unusable. But the human response must be viewed through the lens of the social, political, and cultural circumstances. These exerted a powerful mediating effect on the way the Maya endeavored to cope with their difficulties. Had population levels been lower, the impact of the drought may not have been catastrophic, as it was, the Maya were already reaching the limits of the available subsistence capacity, and Mayan elites had espoused certain social and political agendas (including expensive warfare and competition with each other). It was against this specific background that a period of drought led quickly to crisis and collapse.