Okuma AnlamaSoru #9349
The Maya Civilization and Ecological Strain
During the Classic Period (250–900 CE), the Maya civilization achieved magnificent feats of monumental architecture, hieroglyphic writing, astronomical calendrics, and intensive agricultural engineering across Central America. Yet, between the eighth and ninth centuries, their bustling lowland city-states experienced a catastrophic societal collapse, characterized by dramatic demographic depopulation, the cessation of royal inscriptions, and the abandonment of towering urban centers. While popular folklore previously attributed this sudden downfall to warfare or alien intervention, modern paleo-climatological analyses have uncovered a far more complex ecological explanation. Sediment core samples extracted from Yucatan lakebeds demonstrate that the region suffered prolonged, severe multi-decadal mega-droughts. Crucially, Maya agricultural practices, which involved widespread deforestation to cultivate maize and clear land for limestone plaster production, exacerbated local aridification. By stripping the forest canopy, the Maya inadvertently reduced evapotranspiration and local cloud cover, turning a natural dry cycle into an unmitigated humanitarian catastrophe. The main point of the passage is that ----.
- A)the Classic Maya economy collapsed primarily because of violent foreign military invasions
- B)pre-Columbian Mesoamerican societies were completely immune to natural ecological fluctuations
- C)the collapse of the Maya civilization resulted from an interplay of natural climate change and human environmental degradation
- D)limestone plaster production was the single cause of societal collapse across ancient America
- E)modern paleoclimatology has disproved that climate shifts ever affect human civilizations
Cevabı ve çözümü göster
Doğru cevap: C) the collapse of the Maya civilization resulted from an interplay of natural climate change and human environmental degradation
Çözüm: Metnin ana fikri: Maya çöküşünün hem doğal mega-kuraklıklar hem de insanların orman tahribatı gibi çevre tahribatının bir araya gelmesiyle (interplay of natural climate change and human degradation) gerçekleştiğidir. Doğru cevap C'dir.