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This article explores evidence of deforestation and forest management practices in the Maya lowlands during the pre-Columbian period. In the early twentieth century, scholars first began to examine the role of the environment in the rise and collapse of the great southern Maya polities of the Classic period, proposing that deforestation was an important factor in their political fragmentation and depopulation between the eighth and tenth centuries. In the last twenty-five years, this hypothesis has gained broad acceptance largely due to research at the ancient city of Copan, Honduras. At Copan, scholars claim to have demonstrated that the Maya failed to sustainably manage their forests in the face of rising populations, and that they consequently destroyed vital natural resources. In spite of the popularity of the deforestation hypothesis, evidence in support of it is scant. New research at Copan, described here, rejects deforestation as a cause of that polity’s collapse. Instead, it shows that human populations at that site, as in many parts of the lowland Maya region, adapted to diverse environmental contexts and produced food, building materials, and fuel without destroying the landscape’s potential to support large populations over the long term.
