Researchers found that destroyed the civilization of the Maya

The collapse of classic Maya civilization in Central America could be caused by a small drought. To such conclusion scientists from the Yucatán Center for Scientific Research and the University of Southampton as a result of joint research.

Scientists have long believed that the cause of what was once a powerful culture has come to an incredible decline, and most people died, was a severe drought. However, thanks to experiments conducted by climatologists have found that the seasonal depletion of fresh water in this region was sufficient to reduce the level of rainfall by 25-40 %, according to. air force. with reference to an article published in the journal Science.
To calculate changes in precipitation and evaporation levels in the Yucatan between 800 and 950 years BC, that is in the gap, which accounts for the sharp decline of the Mayan civilization, the researchers used sophisticated modeling scheme.
... According to researchers, long-term drought, and probably caused a violation of the usual principles of life and massive devastation of cities.
Confirmation for the theory of drought have been made earlier and climatologists from the NASA Institute for Space Studies. However, they argue that the death of their civilization, the Maya themselves to blame. As a result of their experiments it was found that the drought could cause such adverse factors, such as large-scale deforestation, the official website of NASA.
It was found that the soil remaining after felling the forest belt, strongly reflects the sun and moisture can not accumulate. ... And the result was a long period without rainfall outburst, which, in turn, led to a change in the average temperature of the earth upward and created difficulties for the cultivation of a number of traditional crops. This was the cause of death and migration from the regions of the traditional habitat.
Past studies have shown that, probably for similar reasons in the year 800 AD the ancient South American civilization died of Nazca, which also cut down large areas of forest.
Either way, the unique cause of the decline of the mighty Mayan culture, scientists are still unable to determine. There are about a dozen of scientific hypotheses about its collapse, among them the name is called, and social upheaval, and an epidemic of a disease.
Today, interest in ancient civilizations rose again as an active rumor about an apocalypse in 2012, supposedly predicted in the Mayan calendar. Experts however say that these rumors are fiction, since that date the Indians were planning to start a new chronology and did not think about the end of the world.