The Maya Empire was located in three modern states, Mexico, Guatemala and Belize.
The role of climate change has been debated for decades in the history of the period from roughly the classical Maya civilisation, which was present from about 300 to 1000 AD but it never gave satisfying explanations for what happened to the Mayans.
But a few years ago an international team of archaeologists and geologists succeeded in determining the amount of precipitation that fell in the classical Maya area and compared it with indicators of war events recorded on stone buildings by studying limestone artifacts. So it is possible that the classical Maya culture flourished during the rainy centuries, but collapsed irreparably when the climate turned arid.
The war indicator was based on the frequency of specific keywords in Mayan inscriptions on carved stone structures. This allowed researchers to show how the dry periods were linked to an increase in the number of wars and social unrest.
My problem with this theory is that there are not enough authentic climatic and archaeological records. The effects of climate change are complex and long-lasting processes so sudden climate change must be only part of the story.
Plus when I look at the leftovers of that empire, it’s like they barely got a scratch. Shouldn’t a major social uproar have messed up those buildings more? It’s almost like those people straight-up disappeared, instead of getting into some real internal conflict.