Abstract for: Studying the Fall of the Classic Maya Kings through a Conflict Dynamic Model

Maya city-states in the southern lowlands and highlands began collapsing during the eighth century CE. Our study focuses on the political, not the demographic, collapse of the city-states. To explore the dynamics of this collapse, we conducted a comprehensive literature survey of Maya monument data. It included the date of monument construction and the last monument date. These dates estimate the duration of active kingship for a city-state. We used these dates to plot the number of active city-states over time, and the cumulative number of collapsed city-states. This model allowed us to quantify the impact of conflict on the political collapse. And also infer the influence of contributing factors to collapse without having to identify them in the model. Many of these factors could cause conflict to arise and others could cause collapse on their own. Our research yielded several key findings. (1) The active and collapsed city-state plots mirror the collapse. (2) The conflict dynamics model fits these plots for an 119-year period. (3) Plots of the number of stable sites and crisis sites and not only their sum, the number of active city-states, improved model comparison with historical events, such as the period of heightened warfare. We showed how a conflict dynamics model fit the plots of active and collapsed city-states well for the period 741 to 860 CE. The best-fitting model solutions differ in their rates of recovery from conflict-induced crises. Historical events, such as periods of intensified warfare, support our study of the Maya political collapse. We show the value of using a dynamic model and macroscopic variables to understand the Maya dynastic collapse. Via grammar checker, ProWritingAid