Maya: How a Great Culture Rose and Fell (National Geographic Magazine, Vol. 212, No. 2, August 2007) Review

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(More customer reviews)"New Orleans" was the best article in this issue, reporting on the scene of the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. The Big Easy is already as much as 17' below sea level, and continues to sink up to 1"/year. Upstream dams and levees built to tame the Mississippi and ease shipping have starved the delta downstream of sediment and nutrients, causing buffering wetlands to also sink. Over 2,100 miles of coastal lands since the 1930s. Worst of all, global warming is raising the Gulf (estimated 3.7' by 2100), and hurricanes now draw more energy from warming seas, becoming stronger and more frequent. They now occur 2X that rate of the 1970s.

Despite having already spent $1 billion, it is estimated it will take until after 2010 to strengthen the levees to withstand a 100-year storm, even longer for a Category 4 or 5 storm - if engineers can even agree on how to do it.

Concerns exist about current construction since Hurricane Katrina - weak soil foundations for levees and floodwalls. The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MR. GO) provides a faster exit for some ship, but experts believe it funnels more water into New Orleans and has eliminated more wetlands.

"The Maya" civilization article was a bit disappointing, though it reached back 3,000 years, dating the rise of their civilization with the arrival of a warlord named "Fire is Born" from central Mexico. His name appears on monuments all across the Maya territory.

They filled in swamps to create fields and carried silt from bottomlands to fertilize gardens. Artificial ponds yielded fish, corrals held deer and other game from the forest - all to support several million residents, many times the number living in the area now. Multi-room palaces with vaulted ceilings were built, a writing system implemented and they created a 365-day year with leap-year corrections. Mayans also predicted solar eclipses.

The fall of the Mayans, however, is not so precise. Internal strife was apparently the reason, ending their 400-year dominance.

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