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Al Gore - aka "ManBearPig"- has been busy rewriting world history. Gore argues that Mayan civilization became a victim of its own environmental excesses and destroyed itself.
Below is an except from his daily blog :
"New study suggests the Mayan civilization might have collapsed due to environmental disasters"
Let's point a few things about the Mayans that Gore obviously doesn't get. First off, the Mayans are quite alive (and have been since the days of Cortez), although with smallpox, syphillus and other epidemics, one could argue that they haven't always been well. Yes, their pre-Colombian ways changed as they were assimilated into Western civilization, but the Mayans are still cranking out crummy tapestries, rope hammocks and mystical reproductions of their ancient calendars. They peddle these things in new age 'wisdom' shops around the world and sell kick-ass dope to beach-goers who visit the Yucatan.
So what was this great environmental disaster? Gore cites the following from environmental archaeologist Kitty Emery of the Florida Museum of Natural History:
[Their] ecosystems were destroyed by mismanagement or were transformed by global climatic shifts, the depletion of agricultural and wild foods eventually contributed to the failure of the Maya sociopolitical system."
The Yucatan is an immensely fertile region that will grow anything (ref. beach-goers above). Spanish colonial settlement in the Yucatan in the wake of Cortez was huge, and while the New Worlders in Mexico faced many obstacles, food isn't mentioned as one of them. In gardening terms, the Yucatan is Zone 11, Jamestown Zone 7 and Plymouth is barely Zone 6. All sorts of shit will grow in Zone 11 as evidenced by the lush jungle that covers the bulk of the region. But none of this seems to matter with Gore.
"As we move towards solving the climate crisis, we need to remember the consequences to civilizations that refused to take environmental concerns seriously."
This last line is utterly ridiculous and testifies to the wanton disregard of the historical record by revisionists like Gore. Usually these people take the other end of the debate and put the whole blame on Colombus for the decline of the New World indians. So which is it?
