Ever been to Mexico and Guatemala and looked at the wonderful
remains of the Mayan culture? Climbed the pyramids and wondered what
went wrong? New research indicates that climate change was largely to
blame for the collapse of the Mayan Civilisation over 1,000 years ago.

At the height of the Mayan era, around the middle of the
8th Century, there were up to 13 million people, but within 200 years,
it was all over, cities ruined and people gone.

Archaeologists have shown that the Mayans built sophisticated
systems of canals and reservoirs to collect rainwater for drinking in
the hot, dry summers. Now scientists are able to prove that in the 9th
and 10th Centuries, probably just before the Mayan civilisation collapsed,
there was a long period of dry weather and three intense droughts caused
by climate change and this contributed to the fall of the Mayans.