![[Chichen_Itza_3.jpg]] As described in the Introduction, the people living in the Americas had been separated from Eurasia for nearly 12,000 years, since the end of the last glacial period of the Ice Age. During these millennia, Native Americans experienced their own agricultural revolution about the same time as Europeans and Asians, but instead of domesticating cattle, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens (which were not native to the Americas) they developed three of the world’s current top five staple crops: corn, potatoes, and cassava; as well as additional foods such as hot peppers, tomatoes, beans, cocoa, and tobacco. Reliable, storable, staple food supplies are a necessary precondition for long-term settlement and population growth – in other words the creation of cities. Like the Europeans, Africans, and Asians, once they had created a reliable food supply, many (not all) American natives built remarkable cities, especially in Central and South America. From present-day Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula south through Guatemala, the Maya developed a complex society which reached its most intense flourishing from 250 CE to 900 CE. However, the Maya changed their social organization and by the time the Spanish arrived, they were living in more separated independent city-states; seemingly having abandoned some of their more impressive temples and structures such as Chichén Itzá in Yucatan. This led to an interpretation that the original society had suffered a partial collapse sometime around 900 CE due to ecological collapse and/or feuding among these separate cities. More recently, anthropologists have begun to suggest the Maya people may just have wanted to live a lifestyle with less centralized control. ----- Next: [[4.3 - Maya Culture]] Back : [[4.1 - The "Old" World]]